Yes, all of us lucky folks who don’t have to salute Donald Trump1 can have a chuckle at the fate of H.R. “Herbie” McMaster, and particularly have a chuckle at his defenders, like Michael Crowley at Politico and Fred Kaplan at Slate, who join in the cry “Say it ain’t so, H.R.!”, reacting to McMaster’s repeated lame-ass attempts to explain away Donald Trump’s compulsive blabbing of highly classified U.S. intelligence secrets to his Russian buddies.
As I’ve already noted, several times now, this is not the first time the general has been caught lying his three-star ass off, but the first time came when he was testifying before Congress, claiming that “Russia possesses a variety of rocket, missile and cannon artillery systems that outrange and are more lethal than U.S. Army artillery systems and munitions”, which was, of course, pure nonsense.2 But that was for appropriations, and I think it’s accepted in DC that anyone has the right to lie when it comes to money.
It’s also “arguable”, as we like to say in the biz, that McMaster had no options other than to either lie or resign, and his resignation would have provoked a firestorm that would, or at least could, have approached the oft-invoked though never equaled standards of Watergate itself. And it’s probably for the best not to rush things.
Afterwords
Politico’s Jack Shafer collects more “more in sorrow than in anger” takes on McMaster’s less than masterly foot shifting while in the line of fire, but no one seems to remember the general’s previous whoppers except me.
- We civilians don’t have to salute Donald Trump because he is our president but he is not our commander in chief. The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces. That is one of his duties but it is not his title. One of the many, many misfortunes the U.S. has suffered as a result of 9/11 is the “militarization” of the office of the presidency, even though, fortunately, we aren’t doing much actual fighting. ↩︎
- If you want “proof” that McMaster lied about the Russkies’ prowess, read Mark Perry’s takedown in Politico. ↩︎
