H. R. McMaster

Infobox Military Person
name=H. R. McMaster
born=
died=
placeofbirth=Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
placeofdeath=
placeofburial=


caption=H. R. McMaster in 2004 as commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
allegiance=United States of America
branch= United States Army
serviceyears=1984-Present
rank=Colonel
commands=1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment
unit=
battles=Operation Desert Storm *Battle of 73 Easting Iraq War
awards=Silver Star
family=Arthur Sr. (father), Mary (mother), Malcolm (brother), Arthur Jr. (brother), Jean (2nd wife)
laterwork=
portrayedby=
enteredservice=
currentlyresides=

Herbert Raymond McMaster (born c. 1960) is an American soldier, and a career officer in the U.S. Army. He is known for his role in the Gulf War, and his reputation for questioning U.S. policy and military leaders regarding the Vietnam War.

Military career

McMaster graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in 1980, where he served as a Company Commander, with the rank of cadet captain, and from West Point in 1984. His first assignment after commissioning was to the Second Armored Division at Fort Hood, where he served in a variety of platoon and company level leadership assignments with 1st Bn, 66th Armor Regiment. In 1989, McMaster was assigned to the 2nd ACR in Bamburg, Germany, where he served until 1992, including the deployment to Operation Desert Storm.

In 1991, he was a captain commanding Eagle Troop of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment at the Battle of 73 Easting in the Gulf War. During that battle, Eagle Troop overran and destroyed Iraqi Republican Guard units that significantly outnumbered it, in conjunction with other 2nd ACR units.fix
link=Wikipedia:Manual of Style
text=vague
title=You can help --
date=August 2008
cat= Eagle Troop suffered no casualties in the attack, and McMaster was awarded the Silver Star for his leadership in that battle. (A popular account of this battle in Tom Clancy's 1994 non-fiction book "Armored Cav" supplements several formal ones.)

He served as a military history professor at West Point from 1994-1996, teaching, among other things, the battles in which he actually fought.

He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a thesis criticizing American strategy in the Vietnam War and detailed in his 1998 book "Dereliction of Duty". [ [http://isbn.nu/0060929081/ "Dereliction of Duty"] ] It harshly criticizes high-ranking officers of that era, charging they inadequately challenged Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson's military strategy. The book was widely read in Pentagon circles. fix
link=Wikipedia:Citation needed
text=citation needed
class=noprint Template-Fact
title=This claim needs references to reliable sources
date=August 2008
cat=
cat-date=Category:Articles with unsourced statements

From 1999 to 2002, McMaster commanded 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, and then took a series of staff positions at U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), including planning and operations roles in Iraq.

In his next job, as lieutenant colonel and later full colonel, McMaster worked on the staff of U.S. Central Command. More specifically, he as executive officer to then Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. John Abizaid. As the general received four-star rank and became Central Command's head, McMaster gained his current rank and served as Abizaid's Director, Commander's Advisory Group (CAG), described as the command's brain trust. After McMaster's departure from the headquarters, he retained "open-door" access with Abizaid and met with him more than a dozen times in the ensuing four years. fix
link=Wikipedia:Citation needed
text=citation needed
class=noprint Template-Fact
title=This claim needs references to reliable sources
date=August 2008
cat=
cat-date=Category:Articles with unsourced statements

In 2004, he was assigned to command the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR). Shortly after McMaster took command, the regiment deployed for its second tour in Iraq in early 2005, and was assigned in May the mission of securing the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. That mission culmination in September when they conducted Operation Restoring Rights and defeated the city's insurgent strongholds. President Bush praised this success, the PBS show Frontline broadcast a documentary in February 2006 featuring interviews with McMaster on his personal experiences there, and the operation was the subject of an article in the 10 April 2006 issue of "The New Yorker."

McMaster passed on command of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment on 29 June 2006 and joined the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, as a Senior Research Associate with what a mandate described as "conduct [ing] research to identify opportunities for improved multi-national cooperation and political-military integration in the areas of counterinsurgency, counter-terrorism, and state building", and to devise "better tactics to battle terrorism." [ [http://www.iiss.org/staffexpertise/list-experts-by-name/h-r-mcmaster International Institute for Strategic Studies - H.R. McMaster. Retrieved 2007-09-02.] ]

Since 2007, McMaster has been part of an "elite team of officers advising US commander" Gen. David Petraeus on counterinsurgency operations in Iraq. [ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2023542,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12 Tisdall, Simon. Military chiefs give US six months to win Iraq War. The Guardian. 2007-02-28. Retrieved 2007-09-02.] ]

Promotion controversy

McMaster was passed over for promotion to brigadier general twice in a row, in 2006 and 2007. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/magazine/26military-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin Kaplan, Fred. Challenging the Generals. The New York Times. 2007-08-26. Retrieved 2007-09-02.] ]

The US Army released the next list on 15 July 2008, and McMaster was among the officers nominated for promotion to brigadier general. The list also indicated that McMaster will be taking the post of Director for Concept Development and Experimentation, in the Army Capabilities Integration Center at Fort Monroe, VA, part of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. [ [http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=12069 DefenseLink News Release: General Officer Announcements ] ]

Decorations and badges

|

Notes

References

* "Armored Cav", Tom Clancy, 1994
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/insurgency/view/ Online Video of Frontline program "The Insurgency", see part 4.]
* [http://www.comw.org/rma/fulltext/0311mcmaster.pdf Nov 2003 "Crack in the Foundation: Defense Transformation and the Underlying Assumption of Dominant Knowledge in Future War", H.R. McMaster (PDF)]
* [http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2005/tr20050913-3901.html 13 September 2005 defenselink.mil]
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/19/wirq19.xml 19 December 2005 telegraph.co.uk]
* [http://www.gazette.com/war/0629war4.html 29 June 2006 gazette.com]
* [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bushiraq12oct12,1,3304719.story?coll=la-headlines-world&track=crosspromo 12 October 2006 LA Times]
* [http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/12/iraq.general/index.html 13 October 2006 CNN]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111901249.html 20 November 2006 Washington Post]
* [http://www.aina.org/news/20061122002921.htm 22 November 2006 Assyrian International News Agency]
* [http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/02/why_people_love_petraeus.html 01 Feb 2007 TIME's Joe Klein]
* [http://www.usma84.net/hr-bio.htm Westpoint Bio]
* [http://www.hoover.org/bios/mcmaster.html]