My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.Those are the words of James Mattis, the current SecDef, who is resigning, most likely, because Donald Trump wants out of Syria. Is this a crisis? No. And Mattis is correct; if he can't get on board with what Trump wants to do, he should resign. In that regard, he's a hell of a lot more honorable than nearly all the major figures in the Department of Justice who have treated their offices as sinecures and sniper's nests.
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 position.
Is Trump wrong about leaving Syria? I don't personally think so. Trying to discern the good guys in that particular place is a fool's errand. We have been doing the empire thing for over a century and over time I've grown increasingly skeptical about the value of what we do in many parts of the world. Engaging with the world does not mean subsidizing it. And we continue to put many people in harm's way for reasons that are often contradictory.
I'm glad James Mattis served our country. He is an honorable man. I'm sorry he is leaving, because honorable men and women are in short supply within the Beltway. Trump will find another individual to serve in his administration. We'll see how it plays out.
4 comments:
Mattis is a warrior cheiftan by nature. Not a statesman. He obviously sees the world around him, and his place within it, differently from Trump. Doesn't make him bad or evil, just honorably discharged today. Damn glad he was one of ours.
Mattis is a warrior cheiftan by nature. Not a statesman. He obviously sees the world around him, and his place within it, differently from Trump. Doesn't make him bad or evil, just honorably discharged today. Damn glad he was one of ours.
Yep. If you have to have warriors, he's the kind you want.
I agree with Gino that Mattis is a warrior but as a chieftain, he becomes by default a statesman. Perhaps the hardest choices we ever make is to decide between loyalty to our boss, or to ourselves. As you point out, his decision reflects the honorable path when you can't agree with the boss. Not something most lawyers will ever understand.
I've been wrestling with the issues of terrorism since the mid-1980s, and Islamic fundamentalism before that. Syria is a no-win situation where we can't even decide what is in our vital national interest. We can stomp on ISIS all we want but it will never really go away as long as there is a call for Jihad and those seeking power can leverage the hatred and hopelessness that exists to form militias.
Those who argue we must stay in Syria to defeat ISIS fail to understand what is our vital national interest, which is really about containing Russia (i.e. preventing their gaining a port in the Med) and stopping Iranian influence. The question is can the token force we have there actually do that, or can it be done using the other tools of US power?
We've been at war now for 17 straight years, and all we've managed to do is screw up the middle east, and west Asia even worse than they were before 9/11. I'm old enough to remember LBJ and all the diplomatic experts explain how if we didn't fight in Vietnam all of Asia would fall to communism, just like so many dominos.
Instead, we have all of middle East falling in to chaos like dominos. We've screwed this pooch good and hard. Time to let it go.
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