In the generals we trust: Trump needs to learn from H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis

On the same page? (KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)

There's a mighty if quiet tug-of-war inside the Trump administration on how to wisely exercise U.S. military force and counter the terrorist enemy. It pits newly tapped National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, former generals both, against the President himself.

If America is going to prevail in the long struggle against ISIS and Al Qaeda radicals and their political allies, the generals must prevail.


Trump's choice of McMaster to take the place of the mendacious Michael Flynn as his chief counsel on keeping America safe was notable first because the replacement, in contrast to the flameout, has won universal acclaim as a brilliant mind and steady hand.

But it's the content of McMaster's philosophy that is especially heartening, given the cauldron into which he steps.

McMaster wrote his history Ph.D. thesis on military leaders' failure to speak bluntly and honestly to President Lyndon Johnson during the escalation of the war in Vietnam.

Equally important, as a colonel in Iraq during one of the toughest periods of that war, he demonstrated how winning over local hearts and minds was instrumental to prevailing in bigger battles.

The site of McMaster's most celebrated triumph was a crucial city near the Syrian border called Tal Afar. Before his arrival, American forces had repeatedly driven radicals and terrorists out, only to see them flood back.

Enter McMaster — and a new strategy to combine a stronger American presence with a painstaking effort to build intelligent, durable and interconnected relationships with the locals.

"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," he later told the New Yorker.

McMaster's credo to the soldiers in his charge was, "You gotta come in with your ears open. You have to really listen to people."

All of which makes him a potentially life-saving corrective to the man in charge.

In the presidential campaign, Trump labeled himself "the most militaristic person there is." Boasting that he knew more about ISIS than the generals did, he swaggered about his plans to crush the group, saying he'd "bomb the s--t out of 'em."

Trump asserted his desire to bring back torture of suspected terrorists and "take out their families," both of which would be in blatant contravention of international treaties.

And, oblivious to the blowback among local populations who surely see it as evidence of rapacious conquest, his regular refrain was that the United States, after invading, should have seized Iraq's oil. Even as President, he has mused, "Maybe we'll have another chance."

Crystallizing the contrary worldviews, Friday came reports that McMaster has told National Security Council staff that he considers it unhelpful to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" to describe ISIS and its ilk, because it accepts the premise that those groups correctly follow Muslim doctrine. During the campaign, Trump incessantly mocked the previous administration for failing to embrace the phrase, asserting it was a sign of weakness. As President, he has wielded the words with relish.

Here again, McMaster is right; Trump is wrong. McMaster's view must prevail.


Mattis, a similarly thoughtful military mind tapped by Trump to be secretary of defense, already schooled the President on the moral and practical hazards of engaging in torture.

And, on his first trip to Iraq in the post, cleaned up his boss' major mess by stating unequivocally, "We're not in Iraq to seize anybody's oil."

The commander in chief, ever seduced by the appearance of strength, has boasted about the china he's ready to break. Americans are fortunate he has surrounded himself with two military men who understand from hard-earned experience that discretion is the better part of valor.