Meet Trump's New General for National Security Advisor

President Donald Trump has named U.S. Army lieutenant general H.R. McMaster to be his new national security advisor. The Monday afternoon announcement comes nearly one week after Mike Flynn was asked to resign from the job following revelations he had misled the White House on his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December.

McMaster will take on the role at a critical time for national security in a part of the world the general knows well: Northern Iraq. McMaster commanded the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 2005 when the division set out to take over the al Qaeda-controlled city of Tal Afar. In September of that year, McMaster's own troops as well as Iraqi forces successfully expelled the enemy from the city. (You can read more about the taking of Tal Afar from this 60 Minutes report about the battle and McMaster, from 2006). Today, Iraqi forces are trying to take back Tal Afar from ISIS, which took control of the city in 2014.

After his success in Tal Afar, McMaster was among those who developed the surge strategy with General David Petraeus. Military journalist Thomas Ricks described McMaster as one of the "two most influential members of the brain trust" around Petraeus's planning for the surge. His reputation as a shrewd analyst of military strategy was boosted by the publication of his Dereliction of Duty. The 1998 book, which criticized the execution of the Vietnam War, focused particularly on mistakes made by President Lyndon Johnson, Defense secretary Robert McNamara, and the Joints Chiefs of Staff.

Most recently, McMaster was involved on a government panel to study how the United States should respond to a newly mobilized Russian threat. Here's more from a Politico story last year about McMaster's role:

POLITICO has learned that, following the stunning success of Russia's quasi-secret incursion into Ukraine, McMaster is quietly overseeing a high-level government panel intended to figure out how the Army should adapt to this Russian wake-up call. Partly, it is a tacit admission of failure on the part of the Army — and the U.S. government more broadly.