McMaster warns of another 9/11, details time in Trump White House
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.
But McMaster makes clear he disagreed with some of the president’s decisions.
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 power-sharing agreement, saying it will pave the way for the Taliban to reimpose its brutally repressive laws on the Afghan people – particularly women.
“What (does) power-sharing with the Taliban look like?” he asked. “Does that look like ... every other girls’ school bulldozed? Or does it look like mass executions in the soccer stadium every other Saturday?”
“... We’ve created this idea that the Taliban can be partners for peace when in fact, they’re determined to establish an Islamic caliphate in Afghanistan and to use that Islamic caliphate as a base for expansion,” McMaster said.
He predicted the effort will result in failure and leave the United States increasingly vulnerable – not just to alQaida but also the Islamic State and other virulently anti-American terrorist groups. The threat is wider now, he said, and those groups are more capable.
Compounding the problem: “There is a very strong sentiment in the United States across both political parties to disengage from these complex problems ... overseas,” he said.
He demurred when asked if the Trump administration made a mistake in dismantling a pandemic preparedness office, which the Obama administration added to the National Security Council as a response to Ebola. (McMaster’s successor, John Bolton, disbanded that unit as part of a broader streamlining effort.)
Still, McMaster said Trump’s instinct to downplay the virus did not make sense.
“In my experiences as a military commander, the more you tell your soldiers about even the most dangerous mission, it’s going to allay their concerns, and it’s going to encourage them to take initiative,” he said. The COVID-19 response is “probably one of the biggest shortcomings” of the Trump administration.