Retired Marine General James N. Mattis was Trumps first Secretary of War Defense but resigned in protest after failing to convince the President that he needed to blow up more countries. Now, the same Mattis who said we needed to keep fighting an 18 year long war, bomb more people, police more nations, ultimately resigned from the administration when it pulled troops out of Syria instead of following his advice to put more in, and now sits as a board member for General Dynamics (aka one of the largest defense contractors in the US) thinks President Trump is bad?… lol. Filed under “No freakin doy”.
Mattis has been laying in wait to come out against Trump in an effort to damage/prevent his reelection bid. He finally made his move in a public condemnation over Trump traveling across the street during a press conference to a church near the White House that was the victim of arson by “protestors” (cuz setting buildings on fire is an appropriate method of free-speech expression, right?) the night before. Mattis said he was angry and appalled, mainly over the Presidential security detail clearing protestors who were blocking the way and accused Trump’s message of unity in front of the victimized place of worship of trying “to divide us.”
About James Mattis
General Mattis was named President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense in December 2016, a month before the new administration was officially sworn into office. He was frequently referred to a “Mad Dog” Mattis, which the L.A. Times said was a nickname his troops gave him “behind his back” after the battle of Fallujah in 2004 where he reportedly ordered attacks on ambulances and aid workers, prevented civilians from escaping, and posed for trophy photos with the people they killed. Under his command, Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium reportedly had to be turned into a graveyard. Whether the troops meant the nickname of comparing Mattis to an insane animal as a compliment or not is disputed, but the nickname stuck and was used by Trump around his nomination time. Less understandable as “maybe they mean it as a compliment?” is his nickname as “The Warrior Monk”, alluding to his 40+ year long war related career and the fact that he has never been married.
Mattis appears to have been, during his military career and beyond, the sort of war loving military man that Hollywood thinks everyone in the military upper ranks is. In 2005 there were calls to discipline him for saying it was “a hell of a lot of fun” to shoot the Taliban, who “slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil.” Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) commented on that saying “We do not need generals who treat the grim business of war as a sporting event. These disturbing remarks are indicative of an apparent indifference to the value of human life.” I disagree, because – it was the Taliban, after all, (and to be fair: CAIR is also designated as a terrorist organization by the UAE) but nevertheless, Nihad didn’t know how deadnuts spot-on he was when he described Mattis in exactly those terms. This Slate article on Mattis from 2010 depicts his attitude about using human beings as canon fodder to the degree that the dude is even against his men wearing helmets on their motorcycles cuz he only wants risk taking dudes ready to get hurt and die within his ranks. If you think that interpretation sounds exaggerated then you tell me what *you* gleaned from this portion of the piece:
Maintaining this culture of ferocity is why Mattis bristles about excessive hand-wringing over Marines who might want to ride without motorcycle helmets. Marines need to be risk-takers. That’s why the corps advertises at extreme sporting events. Ferocity is part of what the corps works to build in boot camp, and it is central to its storied history and traditions. If that’s the kind of spirit you need to fight wars, then you have to accept that the kind of person you want is going to sometimes ride at 120 miles an hour on a bike and hurt himself.
In and out of the Trump Cabinet
This history and “Mad Dog” approach to warfare made some question how well he would fit into Donald Trumps administration, which was promised during the campaign to be decidedly more anti-war than any of the previous Democrat or Republican administrations in living memory. The Mad Dog was portrayed as an anti-torture advocate who would bring a Trumpian aggressive attitude to a foreign policy that was decidedly non-aggressive in a sort of “speak loudly and carry a big stick, but leave that stick at your side until absolutely necessary” (paraphrase) type approach.
Turns out, the fit wasn’t so great.
Mattis finally left the administration in frustration over being unable to convince President Trump to escalate war rhetoric, drop more bombs, send more troops, or start any of the new wars he was looking forward to commanding from the White House. The last straw that caused him to resign in protest was when Trump, against Mattis’ reported wishes and advisement, and hopes and dreams of spilling more blood for no good reason, had US troops removed from Syria.
This made sense to Trump, whose approach to war is more practical, eg – along the lines of “defeat the enemy and get out”, while such an approach is an outrage to warmongers who see every excuse for conflict as a potential for more escalation.
Trump criticized Mattis on the way out, saying Mattis did not see a problem with the US subsidizing the militaries of rich countries, or allowing them to “take total advantage of the US and our TAXPAYERS, on Trade.” Mattis left because he seemingly assumed that Trumps anti-war comments were along the lines of President Obama’s in that they were just political appeals to get elected and then once in office, a war expert like him would easily sway the White House into continuing it’s record of exploding more places than the previous occupant. When Trumps foreign policy ideology didn’t budge, Mattis was evidently very annoyed and left in a blustery huff.
I said on the day of his departure from the administration that he was biding his time to use some bullsh*t “Trump is bad for the American Way” appeal to Trumps base (well, specifically I predicted that he would just use “conservative appeals”) to try and peel them back into the hawks nest but I said it would likely come closer to the election. Indeed, that same month it was revealed that Mattis had explored a potential run for President to defeat Trump and Make America War-focused again.
“Shocker”… Mattis rebukes Trump in election year
While Mattis ultimately decided not to run against Trump in 2020, his commitment to seeing the President he served under get removed from office remains strong and he finally pounced this month, claiming that Trump is bad for “the Constitution” or something.
The statement had a bunch of tired talking points like Trump being -gasp – “divisive” (as if THIS was the big secret revealed) and referring to Trumps press conference that showcased St Johns church – an area landmark damaged by the fires that were part of the devastation from the riots “protests” the night before and continuing into the next day – as a “bizarre photo op” (“wtf is all this calling for peace crap??” he must have furiously exclaimed) and express outrage that the President said he would bring in the U.S. Military to protect and defend the country if the domestic terrorism didn’t stop.
Read this portion of his complaint and you can almost feel Mattis’ heartbreak at learning of such a crushing proclamation antithetical to everything he believes in regarding the countries armed forces – that his precious tools of death would be used, not as pawns in foreign countries, but on American soil protecting actual American citizens from harm.
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.
These checklists of outrages about “divisiveness” and “photo ops” (ie: every single thing a President does in public) are all obviously designed to blow a kiss to the corporate press already circulating those same talking points and try to lend them some seeming credibility from his stature as someone who loves killing people.
Not sure why Mattis thinks the Constitution contains the rights for mob gatherings to impede the travel of the President for any reason (I checked. It doesn’t) – even/including if it is for a demonstration in the street to showcase that you think racism and/or murder is bad. Given his history, he was also presumably super angry that only strictly non-lethal tactics were used to clear the mobs out of the way for the president to visit one of the sites their movement tried to destroy and tell the American people he would put an end to such destruction.
Of course the point of all this is to seize the opportunity to get the President some negative news coverage at a time when his leadership was doing way too well for comfort. While the corporate press succeeded in whipping up an international frenzy of hate and outrage causing violence (that the main anti-Trump fake-Republican group wasted no time cutting into ads) over the seemingly unjust killing of a black suspect in Minnesota during his arrest, the coverage doesn’t appear to be doing much to dent Trumps reputation. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the incident occurred in a Democrat city, under a Democrat mayor, by a Democrat union, and under a Democrat prosecutor, Democrat attorney general, and Democrat Governor, with Republican President Trump (the same guy who undid the worst damage from the Democrat crime bill of the 90s last year) being the only one who acted swiftly for justice in the situation.
While it was never a secret that Mattis, like others in the so called deep state coup participants, wanted Trump replaced with someone easier to convince into sending troops and bombs and bases and money around the world at pre-Trump levels in the Presidency again (whether that be himself or Joe Biden, or future Republicans running for office under a cloud of “see?? Trump lost and you will too unless you fall in line on war games”) this wasn’t common knowledge to the average observer and thus gave weight to the intended effect, which was “respected General turns on Trump”.
Whether any Conservatives at all who like the President will be duped by this charade remains to be seen (the Senates most Trump-critical Republicans, Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Mitt Romney (UT) both praised Mattis’ comments), but at the time of this writing is rather doubtful given the easy-to-reveal history of Mattis’ opposition for the platform of de-escalating violence that they voted for.
Trump haters, on the other hand are all in on this talking point, and Mattis citing the Constitution I guess makes them feel like they have some cover for becoming war shills in the name of justifying their hate for the President because he pens mean Tweets.
At the last minute before I published this post, I saw this tweet from Rich Higgins, a the former director for strategic planning in the National Security Council, making the following claim about Mattis:
Developing…