H. R. McMaster Quotes

"What we can afford least is to define the problem of future war as we would like it to be and, by doing so, introduce into our defense vulnerabilities based on self-delusion."

"Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology."

"It is important to understand how leaders have adapted and thought about war and warfare across their careers. 'The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War' is perhaps the best war memoir ever written."

"Because war is a competition involving life and death, and in which national security and vital interests are at stake, establishing an objective other than winning is not only counterproductive, but also irresponsible and wasteful. In some circumstances, it is also unethical."

"You have to keep listening and thinking and being critical and self-critical. Remember General Nivelle, in the First World War, at Verdun? He said he had the solution and then destroyed the French Army until it mutinied."

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the 'New York Times' or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C."

"It is clear that while our Army was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia studied U.S. capabilities and vulnerabilities and embarked on an ambitious and largely successful modernization effort."

"People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest."

"War is, in fact, an extension of politics, and in any war, military operations have to be conducted in such a way that they contribute to sustainable political outcomes consistent with vital interests that are at stake in that war."

"Consequences of linear thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq included overestimating indigenous forces' capabilities, underestimating the enemy, and the associated expectation that the coalition could soon reduce force levels and shift to an exclusively advisory effort."

"It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged?"

"Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy."

"Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach."

"It's astounding the degree to which these communities are intermarried. Iraq is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and religious sects."

"The key thing about force protection is... if you focus too much on force protection, and you disengage yourself from the community, you're putting yourself at greater risk because you need to interact with the community in a positive way to gain the intelligence you need."

"We're so enamored of technological advancements that we fail to think about how to best apply those technologies to what we're trying to achieve. This can mask some very important continuities in the nature of war and their implications for our responsibilities as officers."

"We often operate effectively on the physical battleground but not on the psychological battleground. We fail to communicate our resolve."

"We confuse activity with progress, and that's always dangerous, especially in war."

"Some people have a misunderstanding about the Army. Some people think, 'Hey, you're in the military, and everything is super-hierarchical, and you're in an environment that is intolerable of criticism, and people don't want frank assessments.' I think the opposite is the case."

"In the Army, because the stakes are so high - right? - you can't just be a yes-man and say, 'Great idea, boss!' if you don't believe it - right? - because lives are at stake. And the commanders that I've worked for, they want frank assessments; they want criticism and feedback."

"Lyndon Johnson was a profoundly insecure man who feared dissent and craved reassurance. In 1964 and 1965, Johnson's principal goals were to win the presidency in his own right and to pass his Great Society legislation through Congress."

"Bombing, particularly from the perspective of the receiving end, is not 'communication.' Bombs result in death and destruction."

"After engaging in acts of war against another nation, there exists a degree of uncertainty in terms of the enemy's reactions. War inspires an unpredictable psychology and evokes strong emotions that defy systems analysis quantification."

"My personal experience in Ninawa Province has been that, at the most fundamental level, people don't really care if it's a Shiite, a Sunni, a Kurd, or a Turkoman that's providing them security as long as that force treats them with respect."

"What we have found is that we were the principal mediators in many cases between the Iraqis and their own security forces and their own government, and so you have to almost embrace that role."

"The important thing to remember is war does not progress linearly. The future course of events is going to be very difficult to predict with a high degree of precision."

"Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion."

"Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security."

"There are two ways to fight the United States military: asymmetrically and stupid. Asymmetrically means you're going to try to avoid our strengths. In the 1991 Gulf War, it's like we called Saddam's army out into the schoolyard and beat up that army."