Earlier: THE FULFORD FILE: Face It—Pentagon Wants To Do ANYTHING But Defend America

Former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has an article in the latest National Review called Preserving the Warrior Ethos, October 28, 2021. It's the cover story of the November 15 issue.

I haven't read it. I don't care what McMaster thinks about the "warrior ethos" if he's not fighting on the American side.

I want to tell you, based on Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear, based on leaks from disloyal Trump appointees—which apparently includes McMaster—who McMaster was using his "warrior ethos" to fight for, and who he was fighting against.

H. R. McMaster had barely settled into his West Wing office at the beginning of March when he gathered the president’s foreign policy team around his desk for a lecture. Mike Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, had been pushed out after it was discovered that he had lied about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. McMaster’s books had not even arrived at the White House yet, and the only picture in the room was of McMaster and Najim Abdullah al Jabouri, the onetime mayor of Tal Afar, an Iraqi city in northern Iraq near the Syrian border that McMaster’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment helped to liberate in 2005. A West Point graduate and decorated Army commander, Trump’s second national security adviser had spent years in Iraq building the delicate relationships that allowed American troops to carefully navigate the sectarian crosscurrents in the dangerous civil war. Now, after just days in the White House, McMaster was not about to be part of an executive order that banned the country’s Iraqi allies from traveling to the United States. Mattis was there, along with Sessions, Kelly, and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state.

 Iraq has to be excluded from the travel ban, McMaster told them. On a practical level, it will complicate cooperation with Iraqi allies still in the field fighting insurgents. Banning Iraqis will play into the hands of jihadists who want to portray America as waging a war against the Islamic religion. McMaster was blunt about his disdain for a policy that seemed to focus on the dangers posed by Muslims to the United States. That doesn’t acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of victims of terror are Muslims themselves, he said.

Sessions was unmoved. “I’m not impressed,” he told the group.

“Well, Mr. Attorney General, you should be impressed,” McMaster snapped, grabbing the photo of himself and al Jabouri. The Iraqi mayor was a Sunni Arab who had worked side by side with McMaster and the Americans as they fought to defeat al Qaeda and create stability in Tal Afar. When it was over, and Shia militias targeted al Jabouri for death, McMaster sponsored green cards for al Jabouri and his family, who came to live in McMaster’s home for six months, eventually buying a house and settling in Virginia. More recently, al Jabouri had been going back to Iraq to continue the fight against ISIS, returning frequently to his family in the United States. It was unthinkable, McMaster told Sessions and the others, that any new policy would bar al Jabouri from returning to his family.

This guy al Jabouri is a general in the Iraqi army as well as a former mayor, a veteran of the Ba’athist—i.e., enemy—army before the Iraq War, and as of 2020 governor of the province of Nineveh in Iraq. I assume his family is still tucked away in Virginia, possibly providing him with anchor baby grandchildren. Michael Flynn, above, was crucified for a phone call with a foreign ambassador, which was part of his job, and for not telling random FBI agents about it.

McMaster's "collusion" with Iraqi "allies" turns out to be far more sinister.

Sessions backed down. “Okay, okay,” he told McMaster, “we’ll take Iraq off.” McMaster was relieved and invited the group to go to the chief of staff’s office to tell Reince Priebus of the decision. As they walked down the hall, McMaster put his arm around Sessions. “I’m really going to appreciate working with you,” he told the attorney general.

 But the warm feelings didn’t last for long. Bannon and Miller were in Priebus’s office, and they were not backing down on keeping Iraq in the order. What began as a discussion devolved into a heated argument. “They’re not an ally. They’re a f-cking protectorate,” Bannon yelled. “I don’t want to hear this sh-t.”

The problem seems to be that McMaster thinks the Iraq War was supposed to be fought for the benefit of the Iraqis, rather than the US.

Bannon did not want the president to take Iraq, or any country, off his travel ban list. Trump’s over-the-top rhetoric had won him the presidency. Backing off now would just make him look weak and feckless to the people who supported him. And anyway, he insisted, the Iraqi government couldn’t even vet the people coming to the United States. Who the hell knows what kind of terrorists might be coming to America from Iraq? Miller jumped in, citing statistics about the number of Iraqis who had stayed in the United States longer than their visas allowed. His voice rising into the usual rat-a-tat-tat as he threw out facts and figures, Miller railed about the Iraqi government’s lack of the proper “chain of title” in determining the real identity of people applying for visas. Maybe, he told Mattis, McMaster, and Tillerson, the United States should just pull out of Iraq altogether.

McMaster was furious. “Iraqi boys are putting their lives on the line,” he yelled. For years, the United States had granted Iraqis a Special Immigrant Visa, under a program signed into law by President George W. Bush and aimed specifically at recognizing Iraqi nationals who worked on behalf of the U.S. government. In the immediate aftermath of the president’s travel ban, Iraqis with those visas had been told they were no longer eligible to enter the United States. It was an outrage, and must be reversed, McMaster said. Tillerson agreed. “The international community is going to go crazy,” the secretary of state insisted. Mattis, normally taciturn, could hardly contain himself. Like McMaster, much of his military career had been spent working with the Iraqi people in the fight against terrorists. The Iraqis who were being blocked by Trump’s order were the good guys, not the bad guys, and everyone around the world except the president and his White House aides seemed to know it. Mattis had gotten an earful about banning entry from Iraqis while he was at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February. Paul Wolfowitz, who was deputy secretary of defense during Bush’s first term, had called Mattis to complain, too.

For more on Mattis, see Disloyal Kelly And Mattis Refused To Let Trump Use Troops To Defend Border, which is also based on Border Wars, and leaks, again, presumably from Mattis himself.

The level of treachery inside the U.S. Government during the Trump Administration was incredible, and Mattis was part of that.