H. R. McMaster

Lt. General H. R. McMaster is now the National Security Advisor: H._R._McMaster

He has been a particularly successful combat commander, from leading the a troop of an armored cavalry regiment in the Battle of 73 Easting, to commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, to later service in Afghanistan; he has served very successfully in three of our wars. Yet he was passed over twice for promotion to Brigadier General. His career has mostly been related to combat, combat arms and further development of our combat capabilities.

Probably one of the more interesting aspects of his career is that while he was a major he published a book in 1997 called Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. It was originally his PhD thesis for his degree in history. Sad to say, I have not read it (yet).

He is still on active duty, which is not the first time this has happened (Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell).

 

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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One comment

  1. ” Lies that Led to Vietnam”, sounds very leftist to me. Perhaps, communism expansion led to Vietnam, I might be mistaken though.

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