H.R. McMaster wrote the book on morally bankrupt leadership

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster wrote the book on morally bankrupt political and military leadership when he penned “Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that led to Vietnam.”

The title says it all.

A U.S. Army major at the time it was published by Harper Collins in 1997, McMaster received backlash for his bold and authoritative questioning of the leadership that marched the nation into war.

And the conclusion was grounded in fact after fact and tons of research. It was almost military in its precision.

The research was done as part of his doctoral work at the University of North Carolina. He plowed though material that had been recently declassified and built a compelling case for how war was lost before it ever really started.

Consider the final two sentences of the book:

“The disaster in Vietnam was not the result of impersonal forces but a uniquely human failure, the responsibility of which was shared by President Johnson and his principal military and civilian advisers. The failings were many and reinforcing arrogance, weakness, lying in the pursuit of self-interest, and, above all, the abdication of responsibility to the American people.”

Then, consider where McMaster now works.

He is the National Security Advisor, sitting at the right hand of President Donald Trump, offering critical input and analysis on the most difficult decisions the president is charged with making.

As the crisis in Syria intensifies, McMaster is in the situation room. On Wednesday, it was reported that Trump was sending McMaster to Afghanistan to assess if more American troops were needed in that fight. Thursday, a large bomb was dropped on an ISIS cave and tunnel complex in Afghanistan.

McMaster’s fingerprints are all over the globe.

And he is charged with offering advice to a president who, like Johnson, has his own political agenda. McMaster is an Army officer with a reputation for academic excellence and military prowess.

Retired Lt. Gen. Carmen Cavezza is watching McMaster’s role in this White House with great interest. Cavezza, a Columbus community leader who was commander of Fort Benning when the first Gulf War started in 1991, built a relationship with McMaster when he was here.

He holds the general in high regard.

“I can tell you this: if McMaster had been in his current position during the time of Vietnam that he wrote about, he would not have lasted very long,” said Cavezza, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who was seriously wounded in the conflict.

Cavezza did not say it, but the reason is obvious: McMaster is a “truth-to-power” guy. And Trump appears to be leaning on the military leadership of McMaster and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general who led Central Command until 2013.

“I think President Trump has turned the fight over to the military guys,” Cavezza said.

And, that’s a good thing from where Cavezza sits.

“In this case, I think President Trump has the support of the majority of the American people,” Cavezza said. “And it appears he has told his military advisers, ‘Here is the game, now go win it.”

If that is the case, McMaster is the key man to watch, partly because he is the first active-duty officer to hold the National Security Advisor job since Gen. Colin Powell in the final years of the Reagan Administration.

“He knows what he is doing and he understands the situation,” Cavezza said.

Part of the reason for that is “Dereliction of Duty.” An Army can’t move forward without understanding its shortcomings, and McMaster put those shortcomings in historical context in what could have been a career-ending move.

“When he wrote that — and again it started as a dissertation — I don’t think he had any idea how controversial it would be,” Cavezza said. “When I read it, my first thought was, ‘How did he get away with doing that?’”

Then Cavezza realized how McMaster pulled off a solo charge up the hill that turned into a mountain of evidence that supported his conclusion.

“He got away with it because he followed the rules,” Cavezza said. “He got the permission when he needed permission. He did it the right way.”

But he paid a price for it, Cavezza said. Sounding a little like the late baseball philosopher Yogi Berra, Cavezza described perfectly what the book did for McMaster’s career:

“It slowed him down and accelerated him at the same time — if that is even possible.”

It makes perfect sense.

“He was persona non grata for a while and that probably delayed his promotion to general,” Cavezza said.

Not lost on Cavezza is how quickly McMaster went from Riverside, the commanding general’s home at Fort Benning, to the White House. He left Fort Benning on July 4, 2014 for a third star and the job of designing the Army of the future.

“It is amazing how quickly that all happened,” Cavezza said.

It is.

If you haven’t read “Dereliction of Duty,” put it on your summer reading list. It will give you valuable insight into McMaster’s new assignment, and you may look at his role in a different light.

The final words of McMaster’s book — “responsibility to the American people” — just might change the way you look at current events. McMaster clearly understands his role and his responsibility to the American people.

More than any other person in the Trump Administration, all eyes should be on H.R. McMaster, who wrote the book on what happens when the balance of power becomes unstable.

This story was originally published April 14, 2017 at 12:22 PM with the headline "H.R. McMaster wrote the book on morally bankrupt leadership."