I first met Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster almost exactly ten years ago. In the fall of 2010, I was working on the Iran desk in the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy, and General McMaster was heading up a new Pentagon unit charged with rooting out the rampant corruption in Afghanistan that was undermining the U.S. war effort in that country. We scheduled a video teleconference call to see whether I might be a good fit for his team in Kabul.
I was a bit nervous going into the meeting. General McMaster was already a larger-than-life figure. …
This article appears as “Know the Enemy, Know Yourself” in the November 2, 2020, print edition of National Review.
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