Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Russ on July 23, 2010, 01:46:20 AM
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General Mattis will be going up for confirmation hearings for the post of commander of Central Command. Very interesting gentleman with a well crafted persona....
Associates of General Mattis offer an explanation for the contradiction of a general who uses “ain’t” in public but devotes his government moving allowance to hauling a library of 6,000 books from station to station, forgoing most personal effects.
He was once asked which American Indian warrior he most respected. His answer was a tribe-by-tribe, chief-by-chief exposition spanning the first Seminole war to the surrender of the Lakota.
I have also heard from Marine officer friends that it is rumored that he believes himself to be the reincarnation of the Carthaginian General Hannabal.
Petraeus’s Successor Is Known for Impolitic Words
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — To those who have served under him, Gen. James N. Mattis is the consummate Marine commander, a warrior who chooses to lead from the front lines and speaks bluntly rather than concerning himself with political correctness.
But General Mattis, President Obama’s choice to command American forces across the strategic crescent that encompasses Iraq and Afghanistan, has also been occasionally seen by his civilian superiors as too rough-edged at a time when military strategy is as much about winning the allegiance of local populations as it is about firepower.
If his predecessor as the commander of Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is known for his skill at winning over constituencies outside the military, General Mattis has a reputation for candid, Patton-esque statements that are not always appreciated inside or outside the Pentagon.
“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” General Mattis said during a forum in San Diego in 2005. “You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway, so it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
For those comments, he received an official rebuke. His career path, however, was not seriously altered, and he now finds himself awaiting Senate confirmation to take over one of the most important jobs in the military. His new assignment would nominally put him atop General Petraeus — now the commander in Afghanistan — in the chain of command and leave him overseeing the reduction of American troops in Iraq, the escalation in Afghanistan and an array of potential threats from across the Middle East and South Asia, including Iran.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described General Mattis’s significant professional growth as he rose through the senior ranks, in particular at his current post atop the military’s Joint Forces Command. “I watched him interact in NATO at the highest levels, diplomatically, politically, and on very sensitive subjects,” Admiral Mullen said.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described General Mattis as “one of our military’s outstanding combat leaders and strategic thinkers.”
But the general angered one of Mr. Gates’s predecessors, Donald H. Rumsfeld, in 2001 with another remark that played well with his Marines, but not with civilian leaders in Washington. After Marines under his command seized an airstrip outside Kandahar, establishing the first forward operating base for conventional forces in the country, General Mattis declared, “The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.”
Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials believed that these words violated the official message of the invasion, that the United States had no desire to occupy a Muslim nation, but was fighting to free Afghanistan from the Taliban tyranny.
General Mattis is viewed differently by those who have been with him on the front lines.
It was the first winter of the war in Afghanistan, when the wind stabbed like an ice pick and fingertips froze to triggers, but a young lieutenant’s blood simmered as he approached a Marine fighting hole and spotted three heads silhouetted in the moonlight. He had ordered only two Marines to stand watch while the rest of the platoon was ordered to rest before an expected Taliban attack at first light.
“I dropped down into the hole, and there were two junior Marines,” the lieutenant, Nathaniel C. Fick, recalled of that overnight operation outside Kandahar. “But the third was General Mattis. He has a star on his collar and could have been sleeping on a cot with a major waiting to make him coffee. But he’s out there in the cold in the middle of the night, doing the same thing I’m doing as a first lieutenant — checking on his men.”
The military career of the previous top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, ended over comments he made to Rolling Stone magazine that were read as disparagements of civilian leadership. Yet even in that context, General Mattis’s past provocative comments do not appear to have caused any serious second thoughts about him at the Pentagon or the White House.
“General Mattis is a warrior’s warrior,” said Mr. Fick, who served twice under his command —in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, and in Iraq in 2003 — and is now chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan policy institute. “That’s a virtue not always appreciated in American society.”
Associates of General Mattis offer an explanation for the contradiction of a general who uses “ain’t” in public but devotes his government moving allowance to hauling a library of 6,000 books from station to station, forgoing most personal effects.
He is a reader of philosophy who has patterned his speeches and writings on Aristotle’s famous dictum on effective communications: Know your audience. When he is speaking to Marines, he speaks like a Marine. When he is speaking to defense chiefs or senior government leaders, he uses their language.
And he is a reader of history. He was once asked which American Indian warrior he most respected. His answer was a tribe-by-tribe, chief-by-chief exposition spanning the first Seminole war to the surrender of the Lakota.
Just hours before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, in which General Mattis ordered his force on a race from Kuwait to Baghdad, sowing chaos among Iraqi units along the way, he wrote a message to Marines under his command that encapsulates the general’s thinking.
“While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam’s oppression,” he wrote.
“Engage your brain before you engage your weapon,” the general added.
He is sure to be tested at Central Command, where his tasks include maintaining relations with allies, some dear and some difficult; building the capabilities of unstable nations to defend themselves against terrorists or other threats; and always, always, keeping an eye on Iran.
The Central Command post in some ways is diminished, since there is an officer of equal rank in charge of the war in Iraq and another for Afghanistan, both falling within the Central Command’s area of responsibility.
Senior officers predict there will be little friction as General Mattis moves into command over General Petraeus, who now has been cast, for a second time, in the role of savior for a faltering war effort. In fact, some officers suggested that General Mattis should have been considered for the Afghan command, but senior officials wanted the more polished Petraeus, given the circumstances of General McChrystal’s removal, and the fact that General Petraeus already was involved in developing the Afghan strategy.
Generals Mattis and Petraeus have worked together before, in writing the military’s manual on counterinsurgency, which has become the guiding concept for both wars — and for which General Mattis rarely gets credit.
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Guess who was a 2nd Lt. under Mattis....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilario_Pantano
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Woof Russ,
First, it's great to hear from you, I hope all is well with you and your adventures and next thanks for the post on Gen. Mattis. I haven't heard that much about the guy really and it seems he will be more of a major player, as Petraeus is not afraid to delegate all the authority needed to his team to get the job done.
P.C.
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Would you like a general who is PC and mediocre, or a general who lays down a provocative one liner, and the tool box to win the war for you? The Indians are/ were past masters at guerilla warfare. If he has been studying them he should be effective, and idf he and patraeus wrote that docterine together- even better. Mattis and Patreus can go together like Patton and Eisenhower.............
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Hey P.C., good to hear from you too!
Mattis will technically be Patraeus' senior as commander of CENTCOM.
There is so far no date listed for the confirmation hearing. I can't imagine they plan to leave the post open for long.
Speaking of Patton.... Patton takes his staff on an unexpected detour to the site of the ancient Battle of Zama. There he reminisces about the battle, insisting to his second in command, General Omar Bradley (Karl Malden) that he was there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patton_%28film%29
I think I'm going to spend some time reading up on counterinsurgency:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf
This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It has been 20 years since the Army published a field manual devoted exclusively to counterinsurgency operations. For the Marine Corps it has been 25 years. With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also must be informed by contemporary experiences.
This manual takes a general approach to counterinsurgency operations. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros, or Tupamaros; the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each varies considerably. Nonetheless, all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people. They use variations of standard themes and adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan. This manual therefore addresses the common characteristics of insurgencies. It strives to provide those conducting counterinsurgency campaigns with a solid foundation for understanding and addressing specific insurgencies.
A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of operations. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies. The balance between them depends on the local situation. Achieving this balance is not easy. It requires leaders at all levels to adjust their approach constantly. They must ensure that their Soldiers and Marines are ready to be greeted with either a handshake or a hand grenade while taking on missions only infrequently practiced until recently at our combat training centers. Soldiers and Marines are expected to be nation builders as well as warriors. They must be prepared to help reestablish institutions and local security forces and assist in rebuilding infrastructure and basic services. They must be able to facilitate establishing local governance and the rule of law. The list of such tasks is long; performing them involves extensive coordination and cooperation with many intergovernmental, host-nation, and international agencies. Indeed, the responsibilities of
leaders in a counterinsurgency campaign are daunting; however, the discussions in this manual alert leaders to the challenges of such campaigns and suggest general approaches for grappling with those challenges.
Conducting a successful counterinsurgency campaign requires a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders. It is our hope that this manual provides the guidelines needed to succeed in operations that are exceedingly difficult and complex. Our Soldiers and Marines deserve nothing less.
DAVID H. PETRAEUS
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army
Commander
U.S. Army Combined Arms Center
JAMES F. AMOS
Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps
Deputy Commandant
Combat Development and Integration
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Iterative Design During Operation Iraqi Freedom II (from p. 99 of the Counterinsurgency Manual)
During Operation Iraqi Freedom II (2004-2005),
the 1st Marine Division employed an operational design similar to that used during the Philippine Insurrection (circa 1902).
The commanding general, Major General James N. Mattis, USMC,
began with an assessment of the people that the Marines, Soldiers, and Sailors would encounter within the division’s
area of operations. The area of operations was in western Iraq/Al Anbar Province, which
had a considerably different demographic than the imam-led Shia areas in which the division
had operated during Operation Iraqi Freedom I.
Major General Mattis classified provincial constituents into three basic groups: the tribes,
former regime elements, and foreign fighters. The tribes constituted the primary identity
group in western Iraq/Al Anbar Province. They had various internal tribal affiliations and
looked to a diverse array of sheiks and elders for leadership. The former regime elements
were a minority that included individuals with personal, political, business, and professional
ties to the Ba’ath Party. These included civil servants and career military personnel
with the skills needed to run government institutions. Initially, they saw little gain from a
democratic Iraq. The foreign fighters were a small but dangerous minority of transnational
Islamic subversives.
To be successful, U.S. forces had to apply a different approach to each of these groups
within the framework of an overarching plan. As in any society, some portion of each
group included a criminal element, further complicating planning and interaction. Major
General Mattis’s vision of resolution comprised two major elements encompassed in an
overarching “bodyguard” of information operations. (See figure 4-3, page 4-8.)
The first element and main effort was diminishing support for insurgency. Guided by the
maxims of “first do no harm” and “no better friend–no worse enemy,” the objective was to
establish a secure local environment for the indigenous population so they could pursue
their economic, social, cultural, and political well-being and achieve some degree of local
normalcy. Establishing a secure environment involved both offensive and defensive combat
operations with a heavy emphasis on training and advising the security forces of the
fledgling Iraqi government. It also included putting the populace to work. Simply put, an
Iraqi with a job was less likely to succumb to ideological or economic pressure to support
the insurgency. Other tasks included the delivery of essential services, economic development,and the promotion of governance.
All were geared towards increasing employment opportunities and furthering the establishment of local normalcy.
Essentially, diminishing support for insurgency entailed gaining and maintaining the support of the tribes, as well as converting as many of the former regime members as possible. “Fence-sitters” were considered a winnable constituency and addressed as such.
The second element involved neutralizing the bad actors, a combination of irreconcilable
former regime elements and foreign fighters. Offensive combat operations were conducted
to defeat recalcitrant former regime members. The task was to make those who
were not killed outright see the futility of resistance and give up the fight. With respect to
the hard-core extremists, who would never give up, the task was more straightforward:
their complete and utter destruction. Neutralizing the bad actors supported the main effort
by improving the local security environment. Neutralization had to be accomplished in a
discrete and discriminate manner, however, in order to avoid unintentionally increasing
support for insurgency.
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Interesting thread find from years ago.
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Nice work Big Dog! 8-)
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Just saw a clip of Mattis that opens with him discussing usufruct and how we are coming up short for our country in this regard.
Not your ordinary Marine!
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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/320171-mattis-on-rise-in-trump-administration
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http://ijr.com/2017/03/815399-sec-mattis-has-a-new-nickname-to-replace-mad-dog-oh-and-he-does-his-own-laundry-at-the-pentagon-too/
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https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/03/09/why-is-general-mattis-nominating-the-muslim-brotherhoods-stooge/
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WTF :? :? :?
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/mattis-defense-hill-republicans-obama-236329
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The article does point out that some of the Republicans on the list were very much against Trump.
So that does cramp Mattis from choosing them to work in a Trump admin.
Also are some Repubs simply pissed their friends and buddies are not getting the jobs more then that these candidates are suitably more qualified?
Yet picking Obama devotees certainly seems very foolish.
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The particular candidates seem to be particularly bad.
We here have all raved about Mattis and readily agreed about the short than usual list of Reps, but this is disconcerting and bears watching.
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http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/28/mattis-gives-quote-of-the-year-when-asked-what-keeps-him-awake-at-night-video/
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http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/28/mattis-gives-quote-of-the-year-when-asked-what-keeps-him-awake-at-night-video/
Full transcript worth reading:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/28/mattis_nothing_scares_me_i_keep_other_people_awake_at_night.html
Time permitting, I would like to pick sections out for the relevant threads, ISIS, North Korea, etc.
I would not want to be an enemy that Gen. Mattis is given authorization to eliminate.
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I sure do hope you have the time!
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http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/james-mattis-a-warrior-in-washington
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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/338508-mattis-gaining-power-in-trumps-cabinet
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http://mihsislander.org/2017/06/full-transcript-james-mattis-interview/
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450464/james-mattis-no-better-friend-no-worse-enemy
James Mattis: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy
by JIM PROSER August 15, 2017 4:00 AM
The highly popular secretary of defense brings a unique mix of compassion, ferocity, and discipline to the job. Plenty of book learning, too. Jim Mattis, retired Marine four-star general, was the first person President Trump nominated to his cabinet. Mattis received nearly unanimous (99 to 1) bipartisan support for his nomination. He then received an extremely rare waiver of the guidelines that exclude recently active military leaders from the position of secretary of defense. It has been more than 60 years since the last such waiver. What could create such unprecedented unity, even enthusiasm, amid the hyper-partisan political rancor of 2017? This overwhelming support goes beyond enthusiasm for his record of military competence. His sometimes shocking public statements and quiet triumphs point to both an extraordinary level of compassion and the capacity for ferocious lethality. So who is this guy, really, who commands this unique place of respect in modern America? Mattis chose a path in life that has brought him repeatedly into mortal combat with the most barbaric evil of our time, Islamist terrorism. Yet he continues to defeat it with insight, humor, fighting courage, and fierce compassion not only for his fellow Marines who volunteer to follow him through hell’s front door but also for the innocent victims of war. He encouraged his beloved Marines in Iraq with this advice: “Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” He spoke plainly, from his heart, warning civilian tribal leaders of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq’s Anbar province: “I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for the next 10,000 years.”
Mattis has long been a living legend in the Marine Corps, earning the odd nickname of “the Warrior Monk.” Robert H. Scales, a retired United States Army major general, described him as “one of the most urbane and polished men I have known.” Mattis’s personal library of more than 7,000 books — including many obscure, scholarly titles — is as famous as his habit of carrying a personal copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius with him into battle. UP NEXT Confederate Monuments 00:36 00:52 Powered by He is a fearsome warrior to a mostly admiring but often misunderstanding public that has stuck him with the nickname Mattis himself dislikes: “Mad Dog,” a moniker implying that he loses control. People perhaps mistake his ferocious aggression for a lack of discipline. Anyone who has served with him will tell you just the opposite: As a field commander, he maintains strict discipline, even sleep discipline, continually striving for “brilliance in the basics.” In his meticulous preparations for the untested “maneuver warfare” that was about to be used in the second Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, he created a scale model of the battlefield from the border of Kuwait to the objective, Baghdad. It was the size of half a football field. A week before the invasion began, he dressed representatives from the dozens of coalition military units in color-coded football jerseys and had them walk through the battle plan as he narrated the maneuvers over loudspeakers to the assembled field commanders. He encouraged his beloved Marines in Iraq with this advice: ‘Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.’ At the end of this rehearsal, Mattis answered questions and then dismissed the group. Mike Murdoch, one of the British company commanders, leaned over to U.S. Marine Captain Stephen Coerr and asked, “Mate, are all your generals that good?”
His competence and level-headedness are so trusted that the president of the United States has given him essentially a free hand to fight America’s wars as he sees fit. Characteristically, in announcing the change of policy toward ISIS from one of “attrition” to “annihilation,” Mattis credited his boss with the decision. One might call this political discipline. As of this writing, after only seven months, the barbaric Islamists of ISIS are on the brink of annihilation in their own capital city of Raqqa. The ‘Warrior Monk’ The legend of the Warrior Monk started 45 years ago when 18-year-old Jim Mattis signed up for the Marine’s Platoon Leaders Course (PLC). He had often admired the challenge to excel offered by the Marine Corps. With typical humility, he now downplays the decision to join up: I don’t think I had the intention of making it a career at that point. I wasn’t closed-minded about it, but it was to go in, look around, and do my time. In those days we had the draft, so there was little choice. And then look around and see what else was out there. But the decision was not as casual as he implies. In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive had just killed 4,000 and wounded 6,000 American soldiers and Marines, so the American military was aggressively seeking new recruits to refill the ranks. Joining the Marine Corps at the time, even with a temporary deferment as a full-time student, was a socially ostracizing and potentially fatal decision. After six weeks of training — as Jim Mattis was hearing around his college campus of Central Washington College — they put a rifle in your hands and sent you to the front of the line, walking the point, on patrol looking for a gunfight in the booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam. And socially, he could forget about the free love, campus hippie chicks that occupied much of his brain space at the time. In spite of the social cost and potential danger, his commitment to the Marine Corps led him to get a master’s degree in history from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Particularly useful for a career in the Marine Corps was his study of The Art of War, a recently translated treatise dating from the fifth century b.c., by Sun-Tzu, a legendary Chinese general. The emphasis on duality in Sun-Tzu’s philosophy, the yin and yang of war, coincided with Mattis’s deep appreciation for the ebb and flow of the natural world and human interaction. Sun-Tzu’s concept of “winning hearts and minds” was a natural fit for Mattis and would serve him well in the wars to come in the East. On July 20, 1978, Captain James Mattis took command of Kilo Company of the Third Marine Battalion of the Third Marine Division (3/3) under the command of Colonel Ken Jordan, a Vietnam veteran.
His life was now out of classrooms and onto the rolling decks of warships. In September, he deployed as part of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit on a “float” to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Okinawa, and Korea. On this first deployment, the Marines rescued hundreds of “boat people” — war refugees in overloaded, uncovered fishing boats often floating aimlessly and out of fuel in the open sea. This human aftermath of the American military retreat from Vietnam and resulting political instability crowded every available inch of deck space around Mattis. Refugees filled the sweaty hold of the ship, clutching their children and meager possessions and often shaking with fear and trauma. This was Mattis’s first real-world experience of war as a Marine. As the Navy’s ground troops — the first in and often the last out of smaller, Third World conflicts — Marines frequently end up with the responsibility for evacuation of war victims. Compassion is a necessary part of an officer’s training, and Mattis’s was put to the test as he shared overheated sleeping spaces, food, and few toilets, often for days on end, with successive swarms of desperate, frequently ill people who didn’t speak English. Compassion is a necessary part of an officer’s training, and Mattis’s was put to the test as he shared overheated sleeping spaces, food, and few toilets, often for days on end, with successive swarms of desperate, frequently ill people who didn’t speak English. Back in Haneohe, Hawaii, home base of the 3/3, a place literally crawling with lonely Marines, Mattis found an attractive and unattached young lady we will call Alice. (Alice’s real name is being withheld as requested by friends of the Mattis family.) The relationship began slowly and remained unknown to most of his closest colleagues. Alice seemed to share a studious, reverential view of the world and had a deep appreciation for the sacrifices endured by Marines. Quietly, the two kindled a romance. Now, as a young captain, comfortable in the simple, Spartan lifestyle of a Marine officer, Mattis turned to sweet, brown-haired Alice to lead him in matters of the heart. On August 4, 1980, Mattis assumed command of the relatively new configuration of a weapons company for the 3/3. Lieutenant David Pittelkow commanded a Dragon anti-armor squad under Mattis. While reviewing Pittelkow’s performance, Mattis noticed the young lieutenant giving orders to his men correctly but not pitching in quite as much with the physical work of setting up the heavy and dangerous equipment. He pulled his lieutenant aside and counseled him like a kind uncle on the shared work ethic of the Marine Corps: “Y’know, Dave, the privilege of command is command. You don’t get a bigger tent.”
Mattis earned the following fitness report from Ken Jordan, his commanding officer: Recommended for the Leftwich Award for outstanding leadership, Mattis exceeds all expectations for tactical knowledge, leadership ability and operational skill. A dedicated, hard-working, dependable officer, he was instrumental in assisting this BLT [Battalion Landing Team] to attain a score of 97 on the recent CRE [Combat Readiness Evaluation], the highest score in the brigade. His company consistently excels in quantifiable areas, and he sets the example for this men. He is intelligent, and expresses himself well verbally and in writing. ’Alice’ At this point, Mattis is engaged to marry Alice. The ceremony is set for late June to coincide with his return from scheduled extensive exercises of the 3/3 in the East. It is to be a quiet, private ceremony with close family and few friends. A few days before departure, Alice suddenly realizes that as a Marine’s wife, she will move frequently to different parts of the world and will face the constant threat of having officers knocking on her door one day in full dress uniform to deliver the worst possible news. As much as she respects the sacrifices that Marines make, she is not prepared to do the same. She insists that Mattis resign, that he choose her or the Corps — he cannot have both. Mattis frets over the decision but ultimately follows his heart. He agrees to resign his commission and begins the process. The upcoming float will be his last. Alarmed at the loss of such a rising star and well-liked leader, Mattis’s Marines launch a love offensive. They send their wives and fiancées to call and visit Alice, some meeting her for the first time, some with their men in tow to vouch for the realities of life with a Marine. The avalanche of support is overwhelming. Alice has deep misgivings but is reassured by the extended Marine family that surrounds her, pledging their love to her and her Jim, and to their family that may come. She finally relents, with only hours left before the 3/3 ships out. The wedding is back on. Mattis trashes his resignation forms and, riding the roller coaster of his emotions, packs his seabag for a long deployment. Nothing stays private very long during months at sea in close quarters, so when they make landfall at various ports, Mattis is repeatedly subjected to hair-raising bachelor parties. They are at sea this time for more than four months. Back in Hawaii, preparations for the wedding proceed with the customary frenzy. As relatives from the mainland begin to arrive and caterers prepare, word comes to Mattis that all is again not well with his bride. His rise in fortune within the Marine Corps is not reflected outside of it. Alice has reconsidered. She simply can’t imagine their married life being anything other than an unhappy waiting game for her and so a burden to him and his career. This time, only a few truly close friends rush to the couple’s support. They beg Alice to reconsider, to be patient, to understand that Jim Mattis is worth the wait. The men tell her, truthfully, that he hasn’t looked at another woman since their engagement. Finally, Mattis and Alice have the talk. She is not swayed. Their engagement is off, the wedding is cancelled. On July 28, 1981, Mattis relinquishes command of 3/3 weapons company Kilo. He is promoted to the rank of major and leaves Hawaii to return home to the Pacific Northwest. He takes command of a quiet Marine recruiting office in Portland, Ore., near the banks of the beloved Columbia River of his childhood. Like the first Marines who remained unmarried while in the Corps, he returns to the simple, monkish life of reading and fishing that he knew before Alice and the 3/3, even before the Marine Corps. He will never marry. Instead, he will devote himself to his adopted family of Marines. Christmas Day The legend of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis is chock-full of tales of heroism and victories on the battlefield, but the story that most reveals the man underneath the general’s stars takes place on a Christmas Day after 40 years of leading young men and women into battle, always from the front lines.
General Charles Krulak, commandant of the Marine Corps, every year, starting about a week before Christmas, baked hundreds of Christmas cookies with his wife. They packaged them in small bundles, and on Christmas Day, at about 4 a.m. Krulak drove himself to every Marine guard post in the Washington-Annapolis-Baltimore area to deliver the cookies to the Marines pulling guard duty that day. This year at Quantico he arrived at the command center and gave a package to the lance corporal on duty. He asked, “Who’s the officer of the day?” The lance corporal said, “Sir, it’s Brigadier General Mattis.” And Krulak said, “No, no, no. I know who General Mattis is. I mean, who’s the officer of the day today, Christmas Day?” The lance corporal, feeling a little anxious, said, “Sir, it is Brigadier General Mattis.” About that time, Krulak spots in the back room a cot, or a daybed. He said, “No, Lance Corporal. Who slept in that bed last night?” The lance corporal answers, “Sir, it was Brigadier General Mattis.” Just then, Mattis came in, in a duty uniform with a sword, and Krulak said, “Jim, what are you doing here on Christmas Day? Why do you have duty?” Mattis told Krulak that the young officer who was scheduled to have duty on Christmas Day had a family, and he had decided it was better for the young officer to spend Christmas Day with his family. So he chose to have duty on Christmas Day in his place. READ MORE: In Defense of Trump’s Generals Trump and His Generals On Defense Readiness, Mattis Steps Up — Jim Proser is the author of No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy, a biography of General James Mattis, to be released by HarperCollins this fall.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450464/james-mattis-no-better-friend-no-worse-enemy
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https://www.facebook.com/prentice.crawford/posts/1429099530531211?comment_id=1429100323864465
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https://sofrep.com/88585/watch-secdef-james-mattis-delivers-an-impromptu-speech-to-deployed-soldiers-in-jordan/
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http://www.hannity.com/content/2017-09-27-under-attack-mad-dog-mattis-targeted-in-taliban-ambush/
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http://www.hannity.com/content/2017-09-27-under-attack-mad-dog-mattis-targeted-in-taliban-ambush/
Doom on them.
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https://conservativetribune.com/mattis-rules-of-engagement/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=AE&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=2017-10-04
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/can-jim-mattis-check-an-impulsive-president-and-still-retain-his-trust/2018/02/07/289297a2-0814-11e8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.5c039c86ccca&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
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https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/mattis-no-single-solution-captured-isis-foreign-fighters/?utm_source=PJMCoffeeBreak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=February2018
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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-16/russia-attacked-u-s-troops-in-syria
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General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, was apparently the second coming of Patton, a real world walking, talking version of Frederick the Great’s maxim, “L’Audace, L’Audace, Toujours L’Audace”, a well-read grunt who spit napalm and ingested cut glass, a Marine who made Dan Daly and Chesty Puller look like campus snowflakes.
During more than 30 years on active duty as a gyrene, the Mad Dog said many classic statements, but these were some of his favorites:
‘It’s quite fun to shoot them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.’
In 2005, he offered this commentary on war: “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
‘There are some as*holes in the world that just need to be shot.’
Speaking to some 200 Marines, Mattis had this advice, according to longtime reporter Thomas Ricks: “The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some as*holes in the world that just need to be shot.”
‘I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fu*k with me, I’ll kill you all.’
Mattis remembered offering this message to Iraqi leaders following the invasion.
‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’
Mattis advised his Marines in Iraq to stay vigilant. In that vein, he also once said, “There is only one ‘retirement plan’ for terrorists.”
Then, in 2014, Mattis made this remark about concerning women serving in the combat arms:
“The idea of putting a woman in there is not setting them up for success. It would only be someone who never crossed the line of departure into close-quarters fighting that would ever even promote such an idea.”
With a Trump victory in the 2016 Election, it looked like the curtain was going to go down on the Pentagon’s PC Follies once and for all. There was a new Sheriff in town and his name was Mad Dog Mattis.
Then everything changed…
At his Senate confirmation hearing in January, 2017, Mattis did more tap dancing than Jimmy Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. He couldn’t give Senator Kirsten Gillibrand a straight answer concerning his ideas about women serving in the combat arms and special operations forces, nor could he give her a straight answer about open homosexuality and transgenders in the military.
Sometime that day, Mattis realized that in order for him to one, become the Secretary of Defense and two, keep that job, he would have to sell his soul to the PC antichrist running our national security now. Mattis decided to castrate himself and what was left of the US military’s combat prowess with his K-Bar.
He became Sleeping Dog Mattis, a Secretary of Defense, still sporting the PX haircut and the Sergeant Stryker growl, but now the grimace isn’t worth a farthing.
On Secretary of Defense General James ‘Sleeping Dog’ Mattis’ watch, the following PC lunacy, social engineering and serious discipline problems have been allowed to continue in the US military. While Mattis is not personally responsible for some of these incidents, they all occurred while he was Secretary of Defense and therefore, they are his responsibility.
Today, it was announced that the U.S. Marine Corps will no longer require prospective officers to pass a punishing combat endurance test to graduate from the service’s Infantry Officer Course. Women can’t pass the course with its current standards. Therefore, all standards must be erased to promote diversity, national security be damned.
Last week, the US Army announced that soldiers in Basic Combat Training will no longer be required to successfully throw a live grenade, nor will they be required to successfully pass the grenade assault course where they would have to throw grenades with dummy rounds. The Army explained that they now have recruits that simply can’t throw a grenade far enough without putting the recruit, fellow soldiers and the training cadre in mortal danger. Translated, this means that the requirement has been dropped to ensure that women pass basic training. Translated, this means we are now going to have a lot of women in the combat arms who can’t throw a grenade.
At the US Air Force Academy last week, First Sergeant Zachary Parish, a member of the training cadre was admonished by Colonel Julian Stephens, the Vice Commandant for Cadet Climate and Culture, for simply informing cadets in an email to dress sharply and act like Air Force Cadets. Parish, was informed by the Academy leadership that he had committed, ‘micro-aggressions.’
Last month, in a scathing letter written by several Green Beret training cadre at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, accused the senior Special Forces leadership of essentially dropping ALL physical standards at the Special Forces Qualification Course, in order to allow women to pass the course.
On January 13th, two male officers, Captain Daniel Hall, 30, and Captain Vincent Franchino, 26, were married in the West Point Chapel as fellow officers served as members of the wedding party in the first ever gay nuptial affair at United States Military Academy.
In December, 2017, Major General Ryan Gonsalves’ nomination for a third star was pulled pulled in the wake of an Army Inspector General’s probe that found he disrespected a female congressional staffer when he called her “sweetheart.”
Then there’s Second Lieutenant Spencer Rapone, a West Point graduate, a holder of the Combat Infantry Badge, a platoon leader in the 10th Mountain Division, who is apparently an ardent communist and supporter of every Marxist-Leninist maniac to have walked the earth in the last 100 years. Pictures of Rapone wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt under his West Point dress uniform and a picture of Rapone holding his cap, with the inscription inside, reading, ‘Communism will Win!’ went viral in September, 2017. Rapone reportedly called Secretary of Defense James Mattis the most “evil, vile f***” in the Trump administration.
The PAO office at Fort Drum has informed US Defense Watch that Rapone is currently on active duty at Fort Drum, apparently still under investigation by the Army and by West Point, which allowed him to attend the academy, when the cadre knew of his political beliefs.
Rapone has been under investigation since September. How long does it take for a Second Lieutenant to be thrown out of the Army?At the court martial of US Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, the presiding judge, Colonel Jeffrey Nance essentially allowed Bergdahl to walk free because Nance, an apparent leftists, felt he was spiting President Trump, by letting a traitor off the hook. Bergdahl is apparently trying to get back pay now and appealing his dishonorable discharge so he can obtain VA benefits.
As of January 1, 2017, transgenders were once again allowed to serve in the US military and receive gender reassignment surgery, courtesy of the US taxpayer. Tomorrow, February 21st, the Pentagon will release more information on transgender troops serving.
Mattis has done NOTHING to reverse Ash Carter’s 2015 authorization, allowing women to serve in the combat arms and special operations forces.
In June, 2017, as reported by Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, the army was warning female soldiers to expect biological men in their showers. That’s just one of the mind-blowing changes the Army, along with “male pregnancies” and taxpayer-funded gender reassignment. According to the army policy: Soldiers are ordered to use the billeting, bathroom, and shower facilities associated with their “gender marker.” If women express discomfort “showering with a female who has male genitalia,” it will be up to the commander to make accommodations – or not. The briefing, titled, ‘Policy on the Military Service of Transgender Soldiers Training Module – Tier 2: Commanders and Leaders’ is focused on maintaining readiness while transgender soldiers are in various stages of gender reassignment.
And, just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier: “Troops are told to imagine that a soldier has “complete Army gender transition from female to male as indicated in DEERS. The soldier did not have sex reassignment surgery, and recently stopped taking male hormones in order to try and start a family. Today, the soldier approached his commanding offer to discuss his newly confirmed pregnancy.”
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot…
In November, 2017, the army announced that they would be granting “waivers” to certain recruits who violate criteria related to mental-health violations like having a history of bipolar disorder, or self-mutilation.
Major General Jeff Snow, commander of the US Army’s Recruiting Command. “The biggest challenge right now is the fact that only three in 10 can actually meet the requirements to actually join the military. We talk about it in terms of the cognitive, the physical and the moral requirements to join the military, and it’s tough. We have a very good Army; there’s a desire to recruit quality into the Army.
Then, there’s the Navy. In June of 2017, ‘the majority of ships operating in the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, where two destroyers were involved in fatal collisions, weren’t certified to conduct basic operations at sea related to war-fighting, according to U.S. Navy records.’ As of late June, 2017, eight of the 11 cruisers and destroyers in the Seventh Fleet, and their crew members, weren’t certified by the U.S. Navy to conduct “mobility seamanship,” or basic steering of the ship, according to U.S. Navy records provided to two House Armed Services.
Finally, last week, Mattis said “Dreamers” serving in or honorably discharged from the military will not face deportation. Mattis told reporters today that service members brought to this country illegally as children will not be subject to any kind of deportation, even if the DACA program expires.
No doubt there are other incidents of PC insanity and general incompetence that I might have missed, and which time precludes me from including. I have not seen one iota of evidence that Sleeping Dog Mattis will change the social engineering agenda that ran amok during the two Obama administrations.
Therefore, if the US military is to be saved from destruction in the next conflict, General James Mattis must be fired as Secretary of Defense and be replaced by someone who will stop the PC insanity in the armed forces before a disaster ensues.
Mr. President, fire Sleeping Dog Mattis.
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"The Army explained that they now have recruits that simply can’t throw a grenade far enough without putting the recruit, fellow soldiers and the training cadre in mortal danger."
Maybe they should teach to throw underhand like the girls do in softball.
Is the volunteer army working anymore?
recruits with bipolar?
Only 3 of ten recruits qualify? You have better odds at getting into med school.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/09/mattis_attempts_to_normalize_a_severe_mental_disorder.html
Hat tip to GM
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/magazine/can-jim-mattis-hold-the-line-in-trumps-war-cabinet.html?nl=top-stories&nlid=49641193ries&ref=cta
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http://freebeacon.com/national-security/mattis-russian-mercenaries-syria-ordered-annihilation/Mattis on Russian Mercenaries in Syria: I Ordered Their Annihilation
BY: Paul Crookston
April 26, 2018 2:44 pm
Secretary of Defense James Mattis explained Thursday why he directed a strike that reportedly killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria back in February.
Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has a deconfliction line with Russia to ensure that the two countries can communicate in order to avoid direct conflict with one another in Syria. He said that a group of "irregular forces" were in conflict with U.S. forces, and once it was ascertained that those forces were not Russian regulars, Mattis directed a counterattack.
"The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated," Mattis said. "And it was."
The force comprised hundreds of Russian mercenaries, which then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo attested to when he said the U.S. killed "a couple hundred Russians." On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Pompeo to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
Asked about whether the Russian Federation was harassing U.S. forces in Syria, Mattis stopped short of blaming Russia for particular battlefield actions.
"I cannot target the responsibility to the Russians right now," he said. "It is a crowded battlefield; it’s also got Iranians there and, of course, the regime forces as well."
He touted the sanctions the Trump administration has imposed on specific Russians.
"You notice as we go forward, we’ve so far sanctioned 189 individuals in Russia," he said.
"Economic sanctions are going to be obviously looked at for future violations as well," Mattis added. "So we have an asymmetric way, an indirect way, of going after them and making them pay."
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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/405665-mattis-trump-relationship-put-to-the-test-by-woodward-book?userid=188403
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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/405665-mattis-trump-relationship-put-to-the-test-by-woodward-book?userid=188403
Didn't Mattis say the book was B.S.?
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Yes, absolutely and I strongly tend to believe him.
OTOH I do note the way President Trump pulled the rug from under him a week or two ago on the matter of renewing training exercises in Korea. Not the only incident of this sort.
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https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/10/16/mr-secretary-are-you-a-democrat/?utm_campaign=Socialflow+MAR&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR04fGnXJ_fwVFl2MFdA0V-UI3_LpCdFc9UyiyZIgAAViPOS6xuEUL9lH_w
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https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-mad-dog-ar-15-stripped-lower-receiver.html?trk_msg=OV4CDO2HRM44L5UH918UB4HQUO&trk_contact=TQFOPF6JEA41M3NTU7L8UHB7GG&trk_sid=GG36KSEG7G6R7CAEIMV1ARJFBG&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fpalmettostatearmory.com%2fpsa-mad-dog-ar-15-stripped-lower-receiver.html&utm_campaign=Daily+Deal+Email&utm_content=5%3a00+pm+email
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https://freebeacon.com/national-security/defense-secretary-mattis-stay-pentagon/
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https://tribunist.com/news/veteran-visiting-arlington-on-veterans-day-saw-a-lone-man-there-this-proves-military-is-in-good-hands/?fbclid=IwAR2tZb_Eh6lCbBiHHyetwnDNknWX6Z4I1g2sV6PrwUSv4iutC3RRYanw4I4
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/19/james-mattis-pressed-pentagon-budget-cuts/
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/10/james-mattis-last-donald-trump-general-standing/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=20171227&utm_term=newsletter&utm_content=morning&bt_ee=WskUgLVZ8lQMYvgd4mNiItZ33m4lRV53fIowdosC8idTO6QMsvY9QN16%2F5mhXdph&bt_ts=1544528339931
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is retiring in February?!?
Timing of the announcement is a helluva coincidence in the wake of the Syrian withdrawal announcement , , ,
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is retiring in February?!?
Timing of the announcement is a helluva coincidence in the wake of the Syrian withdrawal announcement , , ,
I hope this doesn't turn into another disgruntled former cabinet member talk show book tour.
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I would be DEEPLY surprised.
Saw General Keane on Martha MacCallum tonight on FOX.
I've always respected him greatly and tonight was no exception. He is quite unhappy with the decision and definitively said there was no way he would be returning to public life.
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James Mattis to Depart as Defense Chief Over Troop Withdrawals from Syria, Afghanistan
In letter to Trump, Marine veteran said president had right to a secretary ‘whose views are better aligned with yours’
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis at the U.S. Capitol last week.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis at the U.S. Capitol last week. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
592 Comments
By Nancy A. Youssef and
Rebecca Ballhaus
Updated Dec. 21, 2018 12:34 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he would resign at the end of February after President Trump ordered the drawdown of all troops from Syria and many from Afghanistan, because his views no longer “aligned” with the president’s, an abrupt departure of a military figure considered a stalwart of national security.
Mr. Mattis told the president he would quit during a White House meeting Thursday afternoon, after expressing concern about the president’s surprise call to rapidly withdraw more than 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria as well as the prospect of beginning to withdraw as many as half of the 14,000 troops now in Afghanistan in a matter of weeks.
Military officials fear the moves could lead to the re-emergence of Islamic State or like-minded groups in countries where the military has made heavy investments or endanger the U.S.’s on-the-ground partners, U.S. officials said. Mr. Trump said Wednesday ISIS had been defeated in Syria and it is time to bring the troops home. He hasn’t addressed the drawdown in Afghanistan this week.
The unexpected series of events appeared to catch many in the military off guard.
Mr. Mattis had long told associates he wouldn’t quit the post but would have to be fired. Yet in a pointed letter to the president, he suggested he chose to leave. The president had a right to a secretary of defense “whose views are better aligned with yours,” Mr. Mattis wrote.
Legislators and some within the Pentagon said they were shaken by Mr. Mattis’s departure and what it could mean for the U.S. military and the nation’s broader national-security strategy. “We are on the edge,” one Pentagon official said. “This is unbelievable.”
Mattis’s Letter to Trump
“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my positions.” Read the full letter.
On Twitter, Mr. Trump praised the progress made under Mr. Mattis’s tenure at the Pentagon and lauded him as “a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations.” He said he would name a new defense secretary shortly.
Mr. Mattis was considered a steadfast member of the president’s national-security team, even as his influence more recently waned within the White House. During an October appearance on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Mr. Trump said Mr. Mattis was “sort of a Democrat” in a rebuke of the defense chief, fueling rumors that Mr. Mattis’s tenure would end sometime after November’s midterm elections.
There were other hints that the White House was trying to push out Mr. Mattis. Earlier this month, Mr. Trump named Army Gen. Mark Milley as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 10 months before the current chairman and top ally to Mr. Mattis, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, was set to leave.
The president bypassed Mr. Mattis’s first pick for the job, Gen. David Goldfein, who leads the Air Force.
The Consequences of U.S. Withdrawal From Syria
President Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria and declared that America had ‘defeated ISIS.’ WSJ's Gerald F. Seib discusses the significance of the decision and its consequences. Photo: AP
The president has sought to shake up his administration after the midterms. Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired Marine and close friend of Mr. Mattis, is set to leave the White House at the end of the year and will be replaced by Mick Mulvaney, who will serve as acting chief of staff. Mr. Trump also announced the departure of his interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, last week, and is expected to replace Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, according to people familiar with the matter.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, asked about disagreements over policy between Mr. Mattis and the president, told Fox Business News: “Only one person was elected to be commander in chief and president of the United States and that was Donald Trump.”
Republican lawmakers praised Mr. Mattis’s tenure and some sounded warnings about what his departure meant. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said Mr. Mattis’s letter “makes it abundantly clear that we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.”
“There is chaos now in this administration.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) issued one of his harshest public criticisms of Mr. Trump over Mr. Mattis’s departure. “I believe it’s essential that the United States maintain and strengthen the post-World War II alliances that have been carefully built by leaders in both parties,” he said in a statement. “We must also maintain a clear-eyed understanding of our friends and foes, and recognize that nations like Russia are among the latter.”
Mr. Mattis’s departure was unexpected, and there may not be a presumed immediate successor, officials said.
Names that may come under consideration, according to people familiar with the discussions, include Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.,S.C.), an Air Force reservist and military lawyer and longtime national-security hawk; Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, a former Marine; Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.); Deputy Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan and financier David McCormick.
Mr. Mattis, 68 years old, was one of the original members of the cabinet and was celebrated by both supporters and some critics of the administration. A legend within the Marine Corps, where he was a general, the veteran of the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars was seen as both a cerebral military intellectual and the author of popular aphorisms. Among them: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
Early into Mr. Trump’s term in office the president frequently cited “Gen. Mattis” as a key member of the administration. But as the president formulated his own national-security vision, he seemed to privately clash with the defense secretary, who sometimes delayed responding to presidential requests he disagreed with, officials said.
When the president suggested assassinating Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Mattis told his staff to ignore it, according to Bob Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House.” The president proposed an elaborate military parade, but the idea faded away.
“We probably won’t ever know the true extent of bad ideas he knocked down or slow-rolled,” Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, said. “I do believe his value to the administration, and, dare I say, the country, was on those occasions when he, by his mere tone, conveyed a sense of competence and good judgment.”
At times, Mr. Mattis didn’t appear to be a part of key military-related decisions. He was on vacation when the president tweeted in July 2017 the end of allowing transgender troops in the military. Officials said Mr. Mattis learned about the president’s decision to suspend major military exercises on the Korean Peninsula after Mr. Trump told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their June summit in Singapore. The military has had to adjust its exercises and readiness in the region ever since.
Most recently, Mr. Mattis has been largely quiet about the deployment of thousands of active-duty U.S. troops along three Mexican border states in anticipation of caravans of largely Central American migrants and would-be asylum seekers, which the president has called an “invasion.”
As Mr. Mattis’s influence diminished, new faces like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, the national security adviser, arrived, both with forceful approaches to U.S. national security, particularly on how to quell Iranian influence in the Middle East as well as stopping its nuclear program. While the administration applied economic and diplomatic pressure, the Pentagon adopted a less aggressive military posture.
The U.S. military drew down defensive weapons and its naval footprint in the Persian Gulf as Mr. Mattis’s Pentagon concluded that Russia and China were pre-eminent threats.
“There was a perception that Mattis was unwilling to project sufficient American military power against Iran, which, until the Syria withdrawal, appeared to be an essential element of the president’s strategy to roll back Iran’s influence in the region,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a supporter of the administration strategy. “For the president, the credible threat of the military force means it is therefore less likely that he has to use that power and get himself in a protracted Middle East war, like his predecessors. With his Syria withdrawal, which Mattis rightly opposed, he has severely undermined that credible threat.”
The U.S. posture toward Iran has lurked over Mr. Mattis’s career. He was forced to end his military career while commander of U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, because he felt the Obama administration was too passive against an increasingly aggressive Iran. The administration was working instead toward what became the 2015 pact under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear-weapons program.
To become secretary, Congress waived a rule that banned retired troops from cabinet posts for seven years after serving. Mr. Mattis left the Marine Corps in 2013. And while he wore a suit during his stint at the Pentagon he often led the department like a military commander.
He leaned heavily on a bevy of advisers, many of whom had served with him in the military, and kept scores of civilian positions vacant.
He frequently arrived at work around dawn and was at the Pentagon nearly every weekend. And like some generals, he didn’t like to be publicly questioned.
During his tenure as the 26th defense secretary, there were fewer news conferences, less information shared with Capitol Hill or details released about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, which had no end date under his tenure. Information could be used by the enemy, he said.
Most often, he said those who have seen war are the first to oppose it. “Engage your brain before you engage your weapon,” was another one of his more popular aphorisms.
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One has this impression that Trump was grudgingly on board with keeping a contingent in Syria because of pressure from his advisors. I would think Bolton would have agree with Mattis.
And suddenly out of no where Trump in a fit of irritation walking around his bedroom watching criticism on calbe suddenly loses his temper has had enough and impulsively tweets - "we are withdrawing from Syria".
Everyone else who thought they were on the same team and had some sort of understanding hears the tweet mentioned on CNN and suddenly don't know what just happened.
Yet, Trump is the only one we have that I can see , who fights back.
So here we are, again.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/james-mattis-cant-work-for-trump-anymore/
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https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mattis-and-syria-get-a-grip-on-the-hysteria/?fbclid=IwAR2icry32oLiHTpFCeP_dyPYFL53rTydjEAXCMFy99TNbaX3xk9ZhIMcvGw
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https://pjmedia.com/spengler/michael-griffin-for-secretary-of-defense/
I don't recall Obamster firing Mattis without warning in the past .
Of course MSM is ignoring this.
OTOH Trumps' doing it by tweet IS ridiculous.
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thinking about it
wah if Trump had given a state of union address
or other address and laid out the case for removing US forces in Syria and let his team know in advance
3/4 of the "controversy " would have been avoided.
Instead he tweets impulsively at night making himself and everyone on his team look bad.
Why can't this guy learn anything?
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"State of the Union" is not the right name for it, but an address to the nation from the Oval Office would have been the wise call.
Ditto on "The Wall" and the "Shutdown".
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a) https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/27/james-mattis-wasnt-ready-to-serve-in-a-democracy/?fbclid=IwAR2L4nDfn3p6isFCJiFZ-EP-8hr8X5TevDLEn6SihsQgBEWH0o7bwtU79G0
b) opposed leaving Paris Accords;
c) opposed leaving the Baraq-Kerry deal with Iran;
d) opposed President Trump's plan to reconsider transgender policies;
e) opposed President Trump's parade (well, he was right about that one!)
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General Jim Mattis: An American Patriot
General Jim Mattis has served his country for his entire life. He is one of the most important and respected military leaders of the last half-century.
He also has the distinction of being the only person I know who has been fired by both Presidents Obama and Trump. In both cases, it was to the administration’s – and the country’s – detriment. However, in both cases, General Mattis also knew his duty was to the United States. That made him feel comfortable in disagreeing with his commander in chief.
I first knew General Mattis during the Iraq war under President George W. Bush, when Mattis was part of the Marine detachment in Kuwait. I was immediately impressed. I later watched him continually adjust and adapt in the battle of Fallujah, which led him to a decisive victory.
His 44-year career as a Marine, which began when he enlisted in 1969 at age 18, has been stunning. He led Marine forces on the ground in some of the most dangerous places on the planet – including Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and Afghanistan in 2001. His success eventually led him to become the Commander of all Marine Forces in the Middle East and later the Commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, NATO’s Supreme Allied Command for Transformation, and U.S. Central Command. His non-combat service for the Department of Defense has been equally impressive.
I have greatly enjoyed and deeply appreciated working with him as he has served as U.S. Secretary of Defense. Few people alive today have embodied valor, courage, and sheer patriotism that matches General Jim Mattis.
One of my fondest memories with General Mattis was drinking wine and talking with him for a few hours after a meeting with then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. When I told Mattis about my grandson’s fascination with Waterloo, he told me that he had never fully understood the conflict until he had read the Sharpe novel series by Bernard Cornwell about a British officer fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, which I passed on to my grandson.
I have come to know General Mattis as a remarkable intellectual – and perhaps the best-read officer the Marine Corps has ever produced.
The respect for him at the Department of Defense is tremendous. The respect he has garnered around the world – from both our allies and enemies is breathtaking.
Anyone who questions his patriotism or service is simply wrong.
General Jim Mattis is an American patriot. We should all be deeply thankful for the lifetime of service he has devoted to our country – and saddened that his service as Secretary of Defense has come to an end.
Your Friend,
Newt
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Agree. He kept us safe, made rogue nations think twice before messing with US interests. He left the Defense Dept better and stronger than he found it. He served and left in a dignified manner. We will be lucky to find someone with his wisdom and backbone to replace him.
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https://www.thenational.ae/uae/government/uae-must-keep-faith-in-america-says-former-us-defence-secretary-james-mattis-1.864102
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-mattis-duty-democracy-and-the-threat-of-tribalism-11566984601?mod=trending_now_1
By Jim Mattis
Updated Aug. 28, 2019 8:43 am ET
In late November 2016, I was enjoying Thanksgiving break in my hometown on the Columbia River in Washington state when I received an unexpected call from Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Would I meet with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss the job of secretary of defense?
I had taken no part in the election campaign and had never met or spoken to Mr. Trump, so to say that I was surprised is an understatement. Further, I knew that, absent a congressional waiver, federal law prohibited a former military officer from serving as secretary of defense within seven years of departing military service. Given that no waiver had been authorized since Gen. George Marshall was made secretary in 1950, and I’d been out for only 3½ years, I doubted I was a viable candidate. Nonetheless, I felt I should go to Bedminster, N.J., for the interview.
I had time on the cross-country flight to ponder how to encapsulate my view of America’s role in the world. On my flight out of Denver, the flight attendant’s standard safety briefing caught my attention: If cabin pressure is lost, masks will fall…Put your own mask on first, then help others around you. In that moment, those familiar words seemed like a metaphor: To preserve our leadership role, we needed to get our own country’s act together first, especially if we were to help others.
The next day, I was driven to the Trump National Golf Club and, entering a side door, waited about 20 minutes before I was ushered into a modest conference room. I was introduced to the president-elect, the vice president-elect, the incoming White House chief of staff and a handful of others. We talked about the state of our military, where our views aligned and where they differed. Mr. Trump led the wide-ranging, 40-minute discussion, and the tone was amiable.
Afterward, the president-elect escorted me out to the front steps of the colonnaded clubhouse, where the press was gathered. I assumed that I would be on my way back to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where I’d spent the past few years doing research. I figured that my strong support of NATO and my dismissal of the use of torture on prisoners would have the president-elect looking for another candidate.
Standing beside him on the steps as photographers snapped away, I was surprised for the second time that week when he characterized me to the reporters as “the real deal.” Days later, I was formally nominated.
During the interview, Mr. Trump had asked me if I could do the job. I said I could. I’d never aspired to be secretary of defense and took the opportunity to suggest several other candidates I thought highly capable. Still, having been raised by the Greatest Generation, by two parents who had served in World War II, and subsequently shaped by more than four decades in the Marine Corps, I considered government service to be both honor and duty. When the president asks you to do something, you don’t play Hamlet on the wall, wringing your hands. To quote a great American company’s slogan, you “just do it.” So long as you are prepared, you say yes.
When it comes to the defense of our experiment in democracy and our way of life, ideology should have nothing to do with it. Whether asked to serve by a Democratic or a Republican, you serve. “Politics ends at the water’s edge”: That ethos has shaped and defined me, and I wasn’t going to betray it, no matter how much I was enjoying my life west of the Rockies and spending time with a family I had neglected during my 40-plus years in the Marines.
When I said I could do the job, I meant I felt prepared. I knew the job intimately. In the late 1990s, I had served as the executive secretary to two secretaries of defense, William Perry and William Cohen. In close quarters, I had gained a personal grasp of the immensity and gravity of a “secdef’s” responsibilities. The job is tough: Our first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, committed suicide, and few have emerged from the job unscathed, either legally or politically.
We were at war, amid the longest continuous stretch of armed conflict in our nation’s history. I’d signed enough letters to next of kin about the death of a loved one to understand the consequences of leading a department on a war footing when the rest of the country was not. The Department of Defense’s millions of devoted troops and civilians spread around the world carried out their mission with a budget larger than the GDPs of all but two dozen countries.
On a personal level, I had no great desire to return to Washington, D.C. I drew no energy from the turmoil and politics that animate our capital. Yet I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the job’s immensities. I also felt confident that I could gain bipartisan support for the Department of Defense despite the political fratricide practiced in Washington.
My career in the Marines brought me to that moment and prepared me to say yes to a job of that magnitude. The Marines teach you, above all, how to adapt, improvise and overcome. But they expect you to have done your homework, to have mastered your profession. Amateur performance is anathema.
The Marines are bluntly critical of falling short, satisfied only with 100% effort and commitment. Yet over the course of my career, every time I made a mistake—and I made many—the Marines promoted me. They recognized that these mistakes were part of my tuition and a necessary bridge to learning how to do things right. Year in and year out, the Marines had trained me in skills they knew I needed, while educating me to deal with the unexpected.
Beneath its Prussian exterior of short haircuts, crisp uniforms and exacting standards, the Corps nurtured some of the strangest mavericks and most original thinkers I encountered in my journey through multiple commands and dozens of countries. The Marines’ military excellence does not suffocate intellectual freedom or substitute regimented dogma for imaginative solutions. They know their doctrine, often derived from lessons learned in combat and written in blood, but refuse to let that turn into dogma.
Woe to the unimaginative one who, in after-action reviews, takes refuge in doctrine. The critiques in the field, in the classroom or at happy hour are blunt for good reasons. Personal sensitivities are irrelevant. No effort is made to ease you through your midlife crisis when peers, seniors or subordinates offer more cunning or historically proven options, even when out of step with doctrine.
In any organization, it’s all about selecting the right team. The two qualities I was taught to value most were initiative and aggressiveness. Institutions get the behaviors they reward.
During my monthlong preparation for my Senate confirmation hearings, I read many excellent intelligence briefings. I was struck by the degree to which our competitive military edge was eroding, including our technological advantage. We would have to focus on regaining the edge.
I had been fighting terrorism in the Middle East during my last decade of military service. During that time, and in the three years since I had left active duty, haphazard funding had significantly worsened the situation, doing more damage to our current and future military readiness than any enemy in the field.
The 26th Secretary of Defense
I could see that the background drummed into me as a Marine would need to be adapted to fit my role as a civilian secretary. It now became even clearer to me why the Marines assign an expanded reading list to everyone promoted to a new rank: That reading gives historical depth that lights the path ahead. Books like the “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant,” “Sherman” by B.H. Liddell Hart and Field Marshal William Slim’s “Defeat Into Victory” illustrated that we could always develop options no matter how worrisome the situation. Slowly but surely, we learned there was nothing new under the sun: Properly informed, we weren’t victims—we could always create options.
Fate, Providence or the chance assignments of a military career had me as ready as I could be when tapped on the shoulder. Without arrogance or ignorance, I could answer yes when asked to serve one more time.
When I served as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, a new post created in 2002 to help streamline and reform NATO’s command structure, I served with a brilliant admiral from a European nation. He looked and acted every inch the forceful leader. Too forceful: He yelled, dressing officers down in front of others, and publicly mocked reports that he considered shallow instead of clarifying what he wanted. He was harsh and inconsiderate, and his subordinates were fearful.
I called in the admiral and carefully explained why I disapproved of his leadership. “Your staff resents you,” I said. “You’re disappointed in their input. OK. But your criticism makes that input worse, not better. You’re going the wrong way. You cannot allow your passion for excellence to destroy your compassion for them as human beings.” This was a point I had always driven home to my subordinates.
“Change your leadership style,” I continued. “Coach and encourage; don’t berate, least of all in public.”
But he soon reverted to demeaning his subordinates. I shouldn’t have been surprised. When for decades you have been rewarded and promoted, it’s difficult to break the habits you’ve acquired, regardless of how they may have worked in another setting. Finally, I told him to go home.
When you’re going to a gunfight, bring all your friends with guns.
An oft-spoken admonition in the Marines is this: When you’re going to a gunfight, bring all your friends with guns. Having fought many times in coalitions, I believe that we need every ally we can bring to the fight. From imaginative military solutions to their country’s vote in the U.N., the more allies the better. I have never been on a crowded battlefield, and there is always room for those who want to be there alongside us.
A wise leader must deal with reality and state what he intends, and what level of commitment he is willing to invest in achieving that end. He then has to trust that his subordinates know how to carry that out. Wise leadership requires collaboration; otherwise, it will lead to failure.
Nations with allies thrive, and those without them wither. Alone, America cannot protect our people and our economy. At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering. A polemicist’s role is not sufficient for a leader. A leader must display strategic acumen that incorporates respect for those nations that have stood with us when trouble loomed. Returning to a strategic stance that includes the interests of as many nations as we can make common cause with, we can better deal with this imperfect world we occupy together. Absent this, we will occupy an increasingly lonely position, one that puts us at increasing risk in the world.
It never dawned on me that I would serve again in a government post after retiring from active duty. But the phone call came, and on a Saturday morning in late 2017, I walked into the secretary of defense’s office, which I had first entered as a colonel on staff 20 years earlier. Using every skill I had learned during my decades as a Marine, I did as well as I could for as long as I could. When my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faith with our allies, no longer resonated, it was time to resign, despite the limitless joy I felt serving alongside our troops in defense of our Constitution.
We all know that we’re better than our current politics.
Unlike in the past, where we were unified and drew in allies, currently our own commons seems to be breaking apart. What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.
All Americans need to recognize that our democracy is an experiment—and one that can be reversed. We all know that we’re better than our current politics. Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment.
Toward the end of the Marjah, Afghanistan, battle in 2010, I encountered a Marine and a Navy corpsman, both sopping wet, having just cooled off by relaxing in the adjacent irrigation ditch. I gave them my usual: “How’s it going, young men?”
“Living the dream, sir!” the Marine shouted. “No Maserati, no problem,” the sailor added with a smile.
Their nonchalance and good cheer, even as they lived one day at a time under austere conditions, reminded me how unimportant are many of the things back home that can divide us if we let them.
On each of our coins is inscribed America’s de facto motto, “E Pluribus Unum”—from many, one. For our experiment in democracy to survive, we must live that motto.
—Gen. Mattis served as secretary of defense during the Trump administration and served in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than four decades. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” co-authored with Bing West, which will be published Sept. 3 by Random House.
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https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/full-mattis-americans-don-t-need-military-generals-getting-involved-in-politics-71180869513?fbclid=IwAR0ghz0a04-XLUYwShTEBNYAUau342MN4AWYbv4pB82N7nYdKzEn7p49jkw
I thought this very good!
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/act-of-war-mattis-says-obamas-inept-response-to-cafe-milano-bomb-plot-emboldened-iran
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ignoring-reality-biden-got-it-wrong-on-iraq-mattis-says
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https://taskandpurpose.com/james-mattis-democracy-atlantic?utm_content=buffer70c0c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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In Union There Is Strength
I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict— between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us...was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.
This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square.
We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
James Mattis
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"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us."
I guess he missed out on "Punish our enemies" Obama's eight years.
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"We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers."
Maybe he didn't "watch this week's news unfold" .
A "small number of lawbreakers" didn't burn a city to the ground.
The Japanese "must not be distracted by" small lisses in Hiroshima, Nagasaki?
Our enemy is within, and it isn't racism or police tactics.
General, your personal grudge is showing.
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Mattis opposed Trump on limiting transgender costs and rights, and opposed Trump when he wanted a big annual military parade (on that I agree with him, but it was not his call to make)
Mattis supported the Obama-Kerry deal with Iran.
Mattis resigned when Trump insisted we get out of Syria.
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On Syria, that was a valid Viewpoint to take. On the Iran deal, I did not know that.
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Valid, yes, but my point is the extent of disagreement between them.
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https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/06/04/flashback-barack-obama-was-blasted-by-not-one-but-three-of-his-former-secretaries-of-defense-n489295
great one always gets a pass
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/deroy-murdock-mattis-ignored-history-denouncing-trump
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Trump shared the letter from Dowd to Mattis late on Thursday, which stated:
Jim:
I slept on your statement and woke up appalled and upset. You lost me. Never dreamed you would let a bunch of hack politicians use your good name and reputation earned with the blood and guts of young Marines. You did what you said you would — engage in this discourse. Marines keep their word.
The phony protesters near Lafayette park were not peaceful and are not real. They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy. They were abusing and disrespecting the police when the police were preparing the area for the 1900 curfew. Jim, this is the new nihilism. See Dan Henniger in WSJ today. Marines support the police in harm’s way.
Did you forget that President Bush used active duty Marines to quell the riots in LA? President Trump has countless cities and some snowflake governors and mayors wetting themselves in the use of force to protect innocent lives and property. The AG of Massachusetts thinks burning property is good protest. Three more policeman were stabbed and shot in NYC last night.
Think about it. Should he be upset about the obvious failure of leadership? Where are you, Jim?
Marines go to the fight.
No one divided this country more than Obama. He abandoned our black brothers and sisters. He gave guns to cartels. He apologized for our precious sacrifice and generosity overseas. You remember, he fired you.
President Trump has done more to help our minority brothers and sisters in three years than anyone in the last fifty. Ask the black pastors. Ask the leaders of the black colleges and universities. He got them funded. Ask them about the prison reform which ended the draconian sentences imposed on young black men by the laws enacted by Biden and his hacks. You need to bone up on your homework and stop listening to Uncle Leon.
I understand, you had to stick to the assigned narrative which did not include three years of corrupt investigations and evidence to destroy this President, his office, and his lawful free election. Nancy has no tolerance for dissent in the ranks – including those with stars.
You said nothing of the ugly, hate filled, disgraceful comments of Pelosi, Schumer, Perez, and other Democrat hacks defaming the President and his office. You said nothing of the unlawful sanctuary cities and the unlawful release of hoodlums. You said nothing of the resistance movement to paralyze our courts and our government operations. You said nothing of the obstruction and subversion of our immigration laws. You said nothing of MS-13 killers and the drug cartels who own huge sections of our major cities. Jim, do you think that hateful rhetoric and those corrupt actions were inspiring and unifying? Do you think the DI’s at Parris Island would find such behavior as unifying?
Maybe, your problem, is a lot deeper. Perhaps you ought to explain how and why you (and John Allen) as CG Central Command, did not engage and take out Iranian Major General Soleimani who roamed the Middle East and wreaked havoc and death of our American boys with his infamous IEDs?
Why did it take President Trump to have the instincts and balls to take him out (of course over the objection of the geniuses in the Pentagon)?
Looks like the Persian mullahs were a one horse sleigh and Trump nailed the horse…forever. It has been quiet ever since. Perhaps, your anger is borne of embarrassment for your own failure as the leader of Central Command. Did you applaud when the President recognized the central problem in the Middle East? Did you applaud the President when he wanted to save American lives by bringing them home in one piece?
John M Dowd
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https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/07/against-the-james-mattis-personality-cult/
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/09/mattis-discussed-collective-action-to-deal-with-dangerous-trump-new-book-says/?utm_source=breaking_email&utm_campaign=breaking_mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Master+List&utm_campaign=972f4c8f6e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_10_03_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9c4ef113e0-972f4c8f6e-61658629&mc_cid=972f4c8f6e
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https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/11/23/james-mattis-joe-biden-must-eliminate-america-first-from-u-s-foreign-policy/
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https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/11/23/james-mattis-joe-biden-must-eliminate-america-first-from-u-s-foreign-policy/
I can't believe I ever liked this douche.
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Me too.
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our allies first
may THEY lead us.....
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https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/mattis-didnt-disclose-ties-china-boosting-firm-column-slamming
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I think he served the country well at the start of the Trump administration, projecting a quiet strength for the US to would be adversaries. On the main Syria issue, I think Trump turned out to be right. Beyond that I believe he is a registered Democrat so I don't expect to agree with him on policy. Trump's inartful way of handling departures always makes things worse.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/nov/25/james-mattis-failed-disclose-his-role-consultant-t/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=manual&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=AckhNWkAWfRzdLvEV4VOIC0qXaJud%2B1w5udWtATZsfntwmPn7ap1B7QhfO9Spsn8&bt_ts=1606408915788
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in the end, just another bought off swamp guy
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like the LA tar pits
once they step in it they don't leave and just get sucked down
all sorts of creatures animals .......
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/mattis-trump-fomented-jan-6-capitol-assault-013320418.html
the threat is from the Right
not the Left that wants to take over every lever of power in the US
government academia entertainment corporate world
and shove changes to everything down the throats of everyone
it is ok they want to fling open the borders
and monitor everyone scoring them etc
alter the supreme court add 4 democrat senators
alter voting forever
so the can ballot harvest a win in every election
silence opposition
But jerk off mattis sees the threat from the right
got to weed out the right leaning military types replace them with gay lesbian and trans
we can't have right leaning members of military can we?
shut down military uprising right James?
shut down all legal options we have to represent and stand up for ouselves
then be sure to disarm us too, just in case
And Mattis sees the threat from the right - another f..g a hole
my anger keeps rising daily