Mcmaster warns of another 9/11, details time working for Trump
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, H.R. Mcmaster, said U.s.-backed peace talks in Afghanistan are doomed to end in “failure” and warned the risk of another 9/11-style attack on America is “very high.”
The U.S. is “in many ways more at risk today than we were on Sept. 10, 2001,” Mcmaster told USA TODAY in the first print interview for his new book, “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World.”
In a wide-ranging conversation, Mcmaster lamented the politicization of the military, said the Trump administration has mishandled the coronavirus pandemic and expressed grave concern about a “destructive cycle” in American politics that has weakened the country.
“We’re creating this destructive cycle and these centripetal forces that are pulling us apart from each other,” said the former Army lieutenant general. “We’re forgetting who we are as Americans.”
Mcmaster served as Trump’s second national security adviser, appointed to the job in February 2017 after Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was fired for lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. Flynn had served in the post less than a month, and Mcmaster said the White House was not the “well-oiled machine” the president claimed when he arrived.
But his book is not a dramatic tell-all documenting his 13 months in the White House.
Mcmaster said he had no desire to write another “palace intrigue” memoir. Instead, he offers a thoughtful critique of U.S. foreign policy and a restrained assessment of Trump’s approach to North Korea, Afghanistan and other global hot spots.
He says Trump saw a summit with Kim Jong Un as “irresistible.” He said he “can’t really explain” why Trump seems so deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He won’t say if he supports a second Trump term.
“I’m determined, even in retirement, not to be dragged into partisan politics,” he said.
Indeed, Mcmaster takes pains in his book not to attack Trump too directly or too harshly, and in the interview, he tiptoed around some of the most nettlesome issues confronting the White House right now. He says the Obama administration and other presidents also engaged in what he calls “strategic narcissism,” in which they base foreign policy decisions more on hopes and dreams than on reality.
But Mcmaster makes clear he disagreed with some of the president’s decisions – such as withdrawing from the Paris climate accords and negotiating with the Taliban, which he says was based on a “fantasy” and “wishful thinking” that the militant Islamic group would renounce its ties to al-qaida, which orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.
The Trump administration brokered a peace deal with the Taliban in February, agreeing to a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In exchange, the Taliban promised to sever its ties with al-qaida and keep the country from reverting to a terrorist haven. The Taliban is now negotiating with the Afghan government in the hopes of crafting a power-sharing agreement.
Mcmaster said the U.S. deal in Afghanistan will allow the Taliban to expand its territory and establish an Islamic caliphate and a terrorist training ground.
And he ridiculed the idea of a powersharing agreement, saying it will pave the way for the Taliban to reimpose its brutally repressive laws on the Afghan people – particularly women.