The Trials And Tribulations Of H.R. McMaster

Click here for an article in The New Yorker by Patrick Radden Keefe, entitled "McMaster and Commander."

It tells the story of H.R. McMaster's year-long stint as Trump's national security adviser. Tough job! A warrior/scholar, McMaster has written a book entitled "Dereliction of Duty," published in 1997, which described the failure of the advisers around President Lyndon Johnson to tell him the truth about the Vietnam war. I was struck by this paragraph:

McMaster describes Johnson as “a profoundly insecure man who craved and demanded affirmation,” and notes that Johnson—who came into office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy—suffered from a sense of illegitimacy, a fear that he was “an illegal usurper.” McMaster points out that Johnson had “a real propensity for lying,” and that he surrounded himself with “advisers who would tell him what he wanted to hear.” The book’s title refers to the reluctance of military advisers to offer Johnson unvarnished assessments of the war’s progress. McMaster argues that they should not have allowed themselves to be politicized, sanctioning the lies that the Johnson Administration told the public.

Remind you of anyone?