H.R. McMaster Breaks With Administration on Views of Islam (Won't Say Radical Islamic Terrorism)

New York Times ^ | February 24, 2017 | By MARK LANDLER and ERIC SCHMITT

[Pinkbell]

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world.

The adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting.

That is a repudiation of the language regularly used by both the president and General McMaster’s predecessor, Michael T. Flynn, who resigned last week after admitting that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about a phone call with a Russian diplomat.

It is also a sign that General McMaster, a veteran of the Iraq war known for his sense of history and independent streak, might move the council away from the ideologically charged views of Mr. Flynn, who was also a three-star Army general before retiring.

Wearing his Army uniform, General McMaster spoke to a group that has been rattled and deeply demoralized after weeks of upheaval, following a haphazard transition from the Obama administration and amid the questions about links to Russia, which swiftly engulfed Mr. Flynn.

General McMaster, several officials said, has been vocal about his views on dealing with Islamic militancy, including with Mr. Trump, who on Monday described him as “a man of tremendous talent, tremendous experience.” General McMaster got the job after Mr. Trump’s first choice, Robert S. Harward, a retired Navy vice admiral, turned it down.

[BeadCounter]

Also, McMasters did not say anything like the Obama doctrine of not calling terrorism, Islamic.

[Fantasywriter]

Please name “several reliable sources,” for AFTER McMaster joined the Trump administration. (If he’s changed his way of thinking and talking after joining forces with Trump, that indicates he’s now on the same page.)

[Fantasywriter]

‘Daesh,’ is a pejorative that ISIS hates. If there is a PC term, it’s ISIL, which is what Obama used.

[Fantasywriter]

'₩Daesh,' is a pejorative that ISIS hates. If there is a PC term, it's ISIL, which is what Obama used.

[nclaurel]

Will wait to see how the issue of McMaster resolves, but in both quotes he does say “religion” not Islam and in my opinion Islam IS a perversion of religion.

[Fantasywriter]

What’s going on is the fake news NYT and so-called unnamed ‘sources’ are working overtime to undermine Trump. Is there a NAMED reliable, conservative source who has McMaster quotes indicating he’s soft on ISIS? I have yet to see one.

[JPX2011]

You make some good points. I’d like to point out that just as some have used the phrase, “seriously but not literally” to explain Trump’s position to anti-Trump individuals, we should adhere to that as well for our own sake.

Trump’s use of the phrase, “radical Islamic terrorism” is a panacea. It’s not Bush’s strategy as you outlined (it would be if we took him literally) but it also doesn’t encompass the interpretation being expressed here of worldwide civilizational conflict. Although there are some elements of that to Trump’s rhetoric. And even if that’s true (and I happen to think its ultimately a clash of civilizations) some people around here are not asking the follow-up question: what to do about it?

So what is necessary, it seems to me, is generating a coherent U.S. policy based on that very wide spectrum. So the question becomes what is U.S. policy? Is it terrorist-oriented or is it civilizational conflict-based?

And as you rightly point out there is some incoherence in policy. And like you I’m not surprised. We saw this with the Travel Ban and the critique that none of the Gulf states or Pakistan/Afghanistan were on it.

So, like you, I’m not taking a dogmatic approach to this. I know there will be nuances expressed about different types of Islam, inconsistencies, deals with other Muslim nations etc. What people should ask themselves is the overall policy better or worse than Obama’s?

[faucetman]

The most basic, fundamental, understanding of the terrorist threat is that you realize that it is the Islamic religion and the Muslim faith that is the root of the problem.

Not just a few radicals or millions of radicals for that matter. It is ALL Muslims. It is their beliefs in their own scriptures that condemns them ALL.

I have often said that when I see THOUSANDS of so-called moderate (good) Muslims marching in the streets, denouncing the “radical” (bad) Muslims, I’ll change my opinion.

This will NEVER happen, because they ALL believe in their FAKE god, INVENTED in the mind of their illiterate, degenerate, murdering, raping, pedophile prophet, Muhammad.

George W Bush was right when he said “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

It really is, just that simple.

[faucetman]

If you want to be informed about Islam, you need to go here

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/

[SharpRightTurn]

Who’s supposed to be doing the vetting on these guys?

[SuziQ]

So the Old Grey Lady didn’t get this from McMaster himself, but from one of his ‘staff’. Okay. Either the staffer is ‘spinning’ what McMaster said, or could be McMaster is willing to play the media game, but just continue on his merry way, killing terrorists as he finds them. I frankly don’t care what he calls them, as long as he KILLS them.

[onedoug]

Nice rhetoric.

[nathanbedford]

I think you have gone perceptively to the root of the matter when you ask, "Is it terrorist-oriented or is it civilizational conflict-based?"

The history of Islam, the theology of Islam and the real world application of sharia, all point toward a conflict of civilization. If one examines the sweep of Islam, the brutality of its conquests, the blood drenched nature of its suzerainty, its rejection of the modern, of the Enlightenment, and, ultimately, human decency, one must conclude after a millennia and a half we are witnessing just one more eruption of the barbarism which has seized at sword point a great swath of geography and about 1.6 billion people.

That culture has rejected the scientific method and substituted a deductive superstition based on a series of seventh century writings. It is critical that it has rejected the scientific method as a means of determining not just truth but physical reality. It is only an alternative universe, a parallel consciousness utterly departed from Newtonian science, that convinces a mother to strap a suicide vest onto her baby.

Hence, logic plays no part in the world of these cultists, they are victims as much as the people they dismember. Both lose their liberty and their lives, at least in in the Christian sense.

I have often drawn the parallel in these threads to the state of culture in the American ghetto which similarly runs on superstition and conspiracy theory and probably explains to some degree why that segment of our society is so vulnerable to the siren of Mohammed.

So appeals to logic simply do not penetrate. The rabid ones must be killed and the rest must be brought by naked power to a psychological reckoning. They must be brought by whatever means to an epiphany. Those so-called moderate Muslims must be made to see that their very survival depends on it.

Even if we win this war it will only be viewed in the sweep of history as a skirmish until the next eruption of this truly malevolent faith. Meanwhile, this view will precipitate the enmity of the politically correct and might even be a criminal expression in parts of Europe, hence a battle of for civilization but one in which one side wages a Sitzkrieg.

[M-cubed]

if he actually believes that the terrorists who plague the planet now are “un-Islamic” <<

un-islamic????..lol......if anything they are “Ultra-islamic”

[Rockingham]

It depends of course on the intentions of the speaker. For Leftists looking to excuse and downplay Islamic terrorism, saying that terrorism is not Islamic is a common rhetorical evasion. I do not think that McMaster is a Leftist. I am confident that he is quite capable of recommending hard blows against Muslim terrorists and other enemies of our country.

[trebb]

The folks on this thread aren’t holding anyone accountable - they’re looking for reasons to be disappointed. The fact that they want to be held accountable says plenty - what folks here are doing are taking “what ifs” to extremes - very similar to the LSM.

[sargon]

If you cannot properly name and identify the enemy you cannot defeat him.

That is utterly cliche.

Suppose we called the Nazis "scrimbabbles". Does that mean we suddenly couldn't defeat them? Ridiculous.

I see you chose to ignore the observation that President Trump clearly said that he would have people on his team who had differing views. This instance may one of those cases, although only with respect to terminology; it makes not a whit of difference with respect to policy.

So, as is your wont, you're nit pick over irrelevancies.

So the campaign was then and this is now, huh?

The President still uses the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism", and I assume he will continue to do so. Thus your statement is invalid.

For you to assert that a difference in terminology with one of his advisors somehow represents an "incoherence in our policy" presumes facts not in evidence. And it's also nothing that's being "dodged", as you have mis-characterized.

So lighten up, Francis.

As Sarek of Vulcan once said: "Tellarites do not argue for reasons. They simply argue".

Don't be a Tellarite.

When this earth-shattering distinction in the use of terms between President Trump and H.R. McMaster manifests itself in a tangible policy conflict, then you can return to your "incoherence in our policy" canard...

[LS]

Allenby needed Arab forces to beat the Turks in WW I. Both Arabs and Turks were Moslems. T. E. Lawrence went native, thought they were all great. Allenby, on other hand, didn’t trust them and used them cautiously.

One approached locals as a force to deal with, the other as a cultural equal.let’s hope McM is of the former

[BeadCounter]

Just going to McMasters exact words, what was he suppose to say “ISIS (Daesh) are not following a perverted version of religion” ? Seems like we are parsing words.

[Nextrush]

My sense of the situation is that leadership is unwilling to say anything negative about Islam because they don’t want to offend the Islamic countries with the cash in the Persian Gulf area.

After 9/11 actual policy was directed away from Saudi Arabia as an enemy and directed north into Iraq, the Saudi’s enemy.

Afghanistan harbored al-Qaeda but when they ran into Pakistan, they only got pin prick Vietnam style attacks aimed at them.

Pakistan created the Taliban that harbored the terrorists and they got off pretty good enjoying a pretty safe haven.

When Obama did a targeted assassination of bin Laden for re-election, the Pakistanis had a fit and threw the dentist who helped with the operation in jail.

Pakistan doesn’t have money but they do have nukes and that’s what caused the half-a**ed approach.