President-elect Donald Trump is tapping retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to serve as secretary of defense — and hopefully translate Trump’s often contradictory, occasionally incoherent national-defense impulses into intelligent action in a vexingly complex world.
Mattis, a scholar-warrior with deep knowledge of global power dynamics, a carefully considered strategic worldview and experience on multiple battlefields, is as well equipped for the vital job as anyone could be.
Congress should waste no time granting him the waiver he needs to head the civilian-controlled department, necessary given that he’s just three years out of uniform rather than the requisite seven.
Then, confirm him for the job.
Mattis served more than four decades in the Marines, distinguishing himself as a blunt-speaking and gifted military man and winning the highest praise from those who served under and beside him. In 2013, he retired as the four-star chief of U.S. Central Command — which oversees the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
Since leaving the military, he has respectfully but bluntly taken the Obama administration to task for lacking an overarching strategy in the Middle East — an undeniable fact that’s caused consternation, confusion and even pain from Jerusalem to Aleppo to Baghdad to Cairo to Tripoli.
His penchant for leading with his machismo has earned him the moniker “Mad Dog.” He is said to have told Iraqi military leaders after the 2003 invasion, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you f— with me, I’ll kill you all.”
The blunt exterior conceals Mattis’ calm and thoughtful core. To hear him speak of war-fighting is to immediately grasp a deeply read man with tremendous respect for history, the enemy and the awesome killing power at his fingertips.
With language that’s pointed and precise, Mattis has also sketched a strategy for countering the radical Jihadist terrorism that emanates from ISIS, Al Qaeda and their sympathizers.
He has posed the crucial question: “Is political Islam in the best interest of the United States?” continuing, “If we won’t even ask the question, how do we even recognize which is our side in a fight?”
This is many orders of sophistication more advanced the next commander in chief, who talks with a swaggering toughness about ending “radical Islamic terrorism” without much demonstrated clue about how to get from here to there.
At times, Trump has telegraphed plans to “bomb the s–t” out of ISIS, or, bizarrely, for “taking the oil” in Iraq, a notion of which any sage military man would swiftly disabuse him.
At other times, he has suggested ceding the field in Syria to the Russians, who are waging a brutal military campaign not against ISIS but almost exclusively against the enemies of their client dictator Bashar Assad.
While Trump seems to views Vladimir Putin as a model of strength, and his Russia as a potential partner, the clearer-eyed Mattis has warned that Putin’s annexation of Crimea was a “severe” breach — and concluded Putin is trying to “break NATO apart.”
Another star on Mattis’ epaulet: He has no illusions about the efficacy of torture, which, despite being immoral and banned under international law, Trump has treated blithely. In fact, Trump admitted to the New York Times that Mattis opened his eyes on waterboarding, of which Mattis said, in Trump’s telling, “I’ve never found it to be useful. I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture.”
As danger gathers, many voices will be in Donald Trump’s ears. The nation should consider itself lucky that one of the clearest and closest will be that of Mad Dog Mattis.
