Mark Perry posted a background piece “The Revenge of Col. Douglas Macgregor,” on the colonel, now the Senior Advisor to President Trump’s newly appointed Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, with more evidence of his courage over decades against the war party.
Posted in “Responsible Statecraft” on Nov. 12, Perry writes that Macgregor was the smartest man in the Army but rubbed his fellow officers the wrong way because of his outspoken views that went against the grain. The consensus is that Macgregor hurt his own chances of promotion–he retired as a colonel after being sidelined at the National Defense University-–while his one-time subordinate and later rival, H.R. McMaster, went on to gain three stars.
Not everybody rejected his ideas, however, notably Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer, who required every general officer to read Macgregor’s book Breaking the Phalanx, and his successor Eric Shinseki, who had plans to implement Macregor’s reform proposals.
