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" It's astounding the degree to which these communities are intermarried. Iraq is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and religious sects. "
H. R. McMaster
Degree
Crazy
Quilt
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" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Best
War
Thought
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Think
Nature
Mask
" Much of the conventional wisdom associated with Vietnam was highly inaccurate. Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public, Congress, and members of Lyndon Johnson's own administration. "
H. R. McMaster
Wisdom
War
Result
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Government
Principal
Security
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Future
War
Our
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Own
Goals
Man
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Lost
War
College
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
War
Emotions
Enemy
" Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach. "
H. R. McMaster
Hunting
Enemy
Down
" We confuse activity with progress, and that's always dangerous, especially in war. "
H. R. McMaster
Dangerous
Progress
War
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Successful
Army
Clear
" It's important to study and understand your responsibilities within any profession, but it's particularly important for military officers to read, think, discuss, and write about the problem of war and warfare so they can understand not just the changes in the character of warfare but also the continuities. "
H. R. McMaster
Changes
Character
Problem
" When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things. "
H. R. McMaster
Mistakes
Do The Right Thing
Man
" Bombing, particularly from the perspective of the receiving end, is not 'communication.' Bombs result in death and destruction. "
H. R. McMaster
End
Perspective
Communication
" 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? "
H. R. McMaster
Three
Soldiers
Name
" Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion. "
H. R. McMaster
Commit
Religion
Terrorist
" I think any of us who have been involved in the mission of Iraq have developed a great deal of affection for the Iraqi people and are emotionally invested in what we think is a vital mission... So I think any of my contemporaries would welcome the opportunity to go back and make a contribution to this extraordinarily important mission. "
H. R. McMaster
Great
Welcome
People
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Future
Progress
Remember
" Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology. "
H. R. McMaster
Technology
Victory
War
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
War
Listening
You
" What is certain about the future is that even the best efforts to predict the conditions of future war will prove erroneous. What is important, however, is to not be so far off the mark that visions of the future run counter to the very nature of war and render American forces unable to adapt to unforeseen challenges. "
H. R. McMaster
War
Best
Challenges
" People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest. "
H. R. McMaster
Honor
Today
Same
" The professed war-weariness among populations who have sent only a small percentage of their sons and daughters to fight in recent wars may derive from a failure to communicate effectively what is at stake in those wars and explain why the efforts are worthy of the risks, resources, and sacrifices necessary to sustain the strategy. "
H. R. McMaster
Small
Strategy
Failure
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
People
Environment
Think
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Boss
Believe
Great
" We often operate effectively on the physical battleground but not on the psychological battleground. We fail to communicate our resolve. "
H. R. McMaster
Our
Resolve
Physical
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Competition
Winning
War
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Early
Understanding
Security
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
Care
Respect
People
" 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. "
H. R. McMaster
You
Army
Try