In Like Flynn is no longer with us in the capacity of NSC head……and the search went on….Patraeus said NO…..Odierno said NO…..someone even said the idiot of the Right John Bolton was being considered….but hew was passed over….(a fine decision by the president)….and finally a name came up that was agreeable to most…..

President Trump has picked his new national security adviser: Army Lt. Gen. HR McMaster. He is “a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience,” Trump said in announcing his decision Monday in Florida, per Politico. McMaster replaces Michael Flynn, who was asked to resign over his conversations with the Russian ambassador about sanctions before taking office. The Los Angeles Times calls McMaster “one of the military’s most prominent intellectuals.” Some related coverage:

• A blogger at Foreign Policy who knows McMaster calls him “smart, energetic, and tough,” and he maintains that McMaster has written one of the best books on the Vietnam War: Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.
• McMaster talks about life in the military in this 2014 interview with the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus, Ga. Among the quotes: “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.” Read it in full here.
• The New York Times says McMaster’s thinking on counterterrorism served as the basis for Gen. David Petraeus’ strategy that shifted momentum toward the US against insurgents in Iraq.
• Last year, McMaster warned that the Army needed to stop shrinking, notes Heavy.com in its five-things-to-know feature on the general.

• McMaster participated in the Battle of 73 Eastern during Desert Storm in which US troops were outnumbered but still prevailed because Iraqi soldiers were using outdated equipment. He wrote about the battle and its lessons at the Strategy Bridge.

This man is an intellect to be dealt with….yes he is a hawk but a hawk with a brain and sound rational thought.  His cheerleaders are many……

• Politico describes McMaster, author of a 1997 book on America’s mishandling of the Vietnam war, as “one of the military’s leading warrior-scholars” and predicts that he will help Trump build bridges with GOP defense hawks like John McCain, who praised McMaster on Monday as “a man of genuine intellect, character, and ability.”

• Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno tells the Washington Post that he knows McMaster well and he believes the general will excel at coordinating policy. “I don’t see HR as director of an orchestra; I see him as someone who is getting all the instruments to play together,” Barno says.
• Cosmopolitan rounds up eight things to know about McMaster, including the fact that he “is known for standing up for his beliefs” and was chosen as one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2014.
• National Review reports that Charles Krauthammer, one of Trump’s fiercest conservative critics, described the choice as encouraging, noting that McMaster’s willingness to go against prevailing opinion of the time when planning the Iraq troop surge shows “this is a guy who will say what he thinks and promote what he wants.”
• At Business Insider, Paul Szoldra praises McMaster as a “fantastic choice,” not least for the great deal of respect he commands from the troops
• The AP notes that McMaster has a “reputation for being willing to speak truth to power”—and he “appears to hold a much dimmer view than Trump of Moscow’s military and political objectives in Europe.”

The MSM seems to think it is a wise choice……

Below is his opinion on the US approach to war……this is from a speech he gave in 2015……

Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who spends his days trying to figure out the future of conflict and has gained wide respect for speaking his mind, told an audience at the University of South Florida on Wednesday that the United States needs to do a better job of learning lessons and adapting because of its “narcissistic approach to war.”

And, echoing outgoing President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell to the nation in 1961, McMaster urged renewed caution about the military-industrial complex and its influence on how America wages war.

Source: General dissects U.S. approach to war in speech at USF | TBO.com

My personal observation—-I was very impressed in his book on the Vietnam War, Dereliction Of Duty, he was very critical of the leadership during the war and hew was spot on in his analysis…..he is outspoken and has a great intellect….that will make for a good NSC chair if he does not compromise for a cushy posting…..