Lt. General Herbert Raymond McMaster has taken the United States Uniformed Services Oath of Office upon his initial commission and doubtless numerous times since. The oath, for those who are not familiar, goes as such:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
McMaster does not get to be some apologetic sophist for Donald Trump’s apostasy; he is an active duty commissioned officer (albeit in a role that is generally occupied by retired military or civilian advisor) whose duty to country should come before all other loyalties, even to a president, and especially to this pathetic excuse for a human being as Donald J. Trump. His official proclamation that Trump did not reveal classified information to the Russian foreign minister ambassador is arguable an actionable violation of Article 107, False Statements, even if Trump can hold himself guiltless by virtue of executive authority and privilege.
McMaster, by the way, is also author of the book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, which was his Ph.D. thesis. The thrust of his thesis is that military officers did not sufficiently question or challenge President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about their strategic plans and objectives for the defeating the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong or publicly correcting misstatements by both, citing their oath and moral duty to do the same. Fuck, that irony, it burns with a brilliant flame once it gets going.
All the stories when he was nominated made him sound like he would be one of the few who would stand up to The Sentient Cheeto and possibly quit the job rather than give in.
While I do wholeheartedly agree with you, I can see McMaster spinning this in his head… that he is actually upholding his duty to country by lying his ass off to cover for Trump. Because if he didn’t lie his ass off, we’d be even MORE up shit creek over this affair. At least by bullshitting, he can possibly salvage the relationships with other country’s intelligence services…
At least, this is possibly how he justifies it to himself. I’m sure he is not thinking to himself “Self, how can I sell out the country today?” He will have constructed his own justifications for his morally bankrupt words and actions.
And about his book/thesis. “That’s different”, he would say to himself, in order to keep from self-loathing.
No, it’s “he’s too stupid to completely fuck up, he can just mostly fuck up.”
So he can’t say “It’s at 314 Main.” He can only say “It’s a house. Bluish. We drove by it the other day and my top adviser pointed it out and said ‘This is a very important house’ and I said ‘Really important?’ and he said ‘Yes, it’s huge. All of the best intelligence comes out of it. It has top people. The best.’ And then I showed him the electoral vote count so that he knew we had won in a landside.”
Of course, anyone with half a brain can figure it out from there.
Here’s the question - if you’re Germany or Britain, do you share your intelligence with US intelligence services? Do you say “I trust the NSA” or does this leak and those anonymous sources make you think twice about sharing with the US?
And question number two:
If you are some other country and you want to plant false information - do you try to get it to the President under the cover of “top secret info” as you know now that he’ll blithely spill to whoever is in the Oval Office?
And in similar news… The city that Mr. Trump revealed to the Russian Foreign minister? The one that CNN new about a few months ago, but were told “do not reveal this city, because doing so would jeopardizethe lives of our intelligence assets and our relationship with other countries…?”
CNN has been told that even after Trump flapped his pie-hole and gave this name to the Russians, they are STILL not to reveal the name of the city. For the same reasons.
This should get good. We should have expected Comey to keep a memo detailing every meeting with the President. Whatever I think about his actions, he really seems to be a by-the-book guy and apparently FBI agents document EVERYTHING. It’s one thing for a President to “inadvertently” compromise National Security because he is an idiot; it’s another entirely to deliberately try to obstruct justice.
Meanwhile-I am counting down to McMaster’s resignation…
You know the intelligence source Trump compromised is likely both Muslim and from one of the countries on Trump’s latest bạn list. Trump simply does not care what the consequences of his actions or words are so long as he and his supporters can call him a success. Blabbing to Russia was just a way for Trump to show someone he respects (another dictatorial ruler) how much Trump knows, and to hell with what happens to real people, real people who, after all, don’t count as such in Trump’s view.
A word to Okrahoma: Those of us who have actually worked with classified information, know that your appraisal of its handling is far off the mark.