President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense called the 2003 invasion of Iraq a “mistake,” according to a recording obtained by The Intercept.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mattis said, “we will probably look back on the invasion of Iraq as a mistake — as a strategic mistake.”
Mattis was one of the Iraq campaign’s most important ground commanders. He led the 1st Marine Division during the invasion and later oversaw the bloody retaking of Fallujah from insurgents in 2004.
As for the Pentagon’s view on the Iraq invasion at the time, Mattis said this: “I think people were pretty much aware that the U.S. military didn’t think it was a very wise idea. But we give a cheery ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Because when you elect someone commander in chief — we give our advice. We generally give it in private.”
Mattis’s comments came during a question-and-answer session after a keynote delivered last year at ASIS International, a conference for “global security professionals” held in Anaheim, California. A conference participant provided an audio recording of Mattis’s speech exclusively to The Intercept.
Mattis was not among the six retired generals who went on the record in 2007 to criticize Donald Rumsfeld’s management of the war. Trump himself has criticized the Iraq invasion, and falsely claimed that he spoke out against it from the beginning. His choice for national security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, told Der Spiegel that the invasion was a “huge error” and “strategic failure.” Elsewhere, Mattis has called the Iraq and Afghanistan wars “poorly explained and inconclusive.” But if Mattis was among those who did not agree with President George W. Bush’s decision to invade, he did a good job of hiding his personal views. His famously gung-ho message to U.S. Marines on the eve of the invasion urged them to “fight with a happy heart and strong spirit” to unseat a dictator who “murdered the Iraqi people … and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction.”
Mattis, who has recently been described as “outspoken” and “direct,” has openly criticized the Obama White House for not taking a harder line on Iran. But more than 10 years on, Mattis is yet to publicly question President George W. Bush’s decision to start the war, in which more than 1,000 U.S. Marines have died, despite the fact that the “weapons of mass destruction” were never found.
On the audio recording from the conference, Mattis can be heard worrying aloud about how far his views on Iraq will spread. “Dave, is this being — going out to the media?” he asks. “It could be recorded, but is that for internal …” Peggy O’Connor, a spokesperson for ASIS, said the luncheon was open to exhibitors as well as anyone else who bought a ticket. “There were several thousand people in the room,” she said, though she was not aware of any media.
The contrast between Mattis’s discrete treatment of one administration’s military approach to the Middle East and the next administration’s more diplomatic approach is striking. Some of the contrast is likely a function of seniority. Before he was reportedly fired in 2013, Mattis served Obama as head of U.S. Central Command, a role in which he would have had more input into policy than he did as a one-star general under Bush 10 years before. But Mattis’s deference to the president’s constitutional war-making powers raises the question of whether Congress should make an exception to a law that prohibits retired officers who, like Mattis, have been out of uniform for fewer than seven years, from serving as secretary of defense, a civilian office. If Trump, like Bush, attempted to start an unprovoked war of aggression, would Secretary Mattis be a stabilizing voice? Or would he say “aye aye, sir”?
“Nobody elected me,” Mattis told the audience in 2015. “But I did feel I had to be heard. And I was very blunt. And I gave my advice. But when it’s all over and done with, ladies and gentlemen, your military is obedient to the Constitution that says we obey the president. We swear an oath to protect that Constitution, and we live up to it. Loyalty only counts, we say, when there’s one hundred reasons not to be.”
Retired Marine Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Mattis’s remarks on the Iraq invasion demonstrated “a willingness to accept a hard ‘lesson learned.’ Many Republicans and military are still not willing to say that.”
In addition to comments on Iraq and the military’s role in decision-making, the speech contains some of Mattis’s most candid remarks to date on Iran. Mattis said that he read the 156-page Iran nuclear agreement twice. “It’s probably as good a document as we could have come out with,” he said, “even though it’s not one that I would have wanted to sign.” The Obama administration, Mattis said, lost its leverage with Iran after failing to follow through on a threat to use force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for crossing an explicit “red line” prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. During the Iran negotiations, Mattis argued, “the military option was not a believable one.” Elsewhere, Mattis has suggested that there is some link between ISIS and Iran.
The recording of Mattis’s speech was provided to The Intercept by Jakob S. Boeskov, an artist in New York who attended the ASIS 2015 event as part of an art project called “Face Jagger” and paid $5,200 for a booth and an exhibitor pass, which allowed him to display what he describes as “a fictitious cyber weapon.”
“Deception has been part of military strategy since the dawn of man,” Boeskov wrote in a statement accompanying the release. “But truth is needed in the civilian parts of society. The Iraq War was based on misinformation and fabricated stories about weapons of mass destruction. All rules change when politicians lie. Not only for art but also for military leaders. When politicians lie, a military leader has the right to say no to war.”
The Trump transition team was provided with a copy of the recording late Sunday. When reached on Monday morning, a transition spokesperson did not dispute the authenticity of the recording, nor did he offer any comment.
PROBABLY a mistake? This coming from a person quoted as saying I really love to kill people. I love to fuck the enemy up.
That young person thought it was worth it based on the propaganda from media outlets, politicians, and high ranking officers who should have known better and from the false sense of patriotism going around nowadays.
For those who think the lower ranking members should revolt and disobeyed orders or gone AWOL: uh uh, nope, no fucking way. Burning coals of fire belong directly on the heads of the people higher up the chain of command.
Maybe a lesson learned here is that the US military really can’t effectively fight a global war on terror — it’s misapplication and misuse. They swore to uphold and defend the US Const. and that has absolutely zero to do with executing revenge missions on 2nd and 3rd world countries.
It may be hard to swallow but the 911 attack or any terror attack does not in anyway threaten the US Constitution; however, the US gov reaction to the attacks did and does… and in that way the terror attacks work.
America’s Iraq War was not a mistake. That is an Orwellian weasel word alibi. The Iraq War was an America-led war of aggression based on lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction.
This American war is thus, according to the criteria established by the WW2 Nuremberg Tribunal, a supreme international (war) crime.
As such, people like General Mattis and others of the Bush Regime and Congress, who supported this war, should be brought to justice and put in trial for their crimes–just like the Nazis faced.
But things are different being back in Iraq this time? Or even more so, being in Syria?
Off course it was mistake..are you kidding?
Empire destroyed because of this stupid mistake.
It is the job of the military to follow the orders of the Commander in Chief. A general gives his advice in private, but in the end he either follows orders or he resigns. Mattis did exactly the right thing.
No, he should have resigned.
Don’t forget, Mattis is the guy who refused to rescue some stranded Green Berets and left them to die.
https://www.stripes.com/news/retired-green-beret-says-mattis-left-my-men-to-die-in-afghanistan-1.442367
Smedley Butler he ain’t.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/12/01/trump-looming-showdown-with-double-government/NMiLbylkAlSOWXC9708IAJ/story.html
The one essential condition for double government to function effectively is that the elected and concealed institutions present a united front. Harmony between the two institutions, at least in the eyes of the public, is vital. Trump, unlike his predecessors, has openly broken with the security directorate. Moreover, most of the program he’s espoused entails ramping up rather than scaling back security, which the bureaucracy has historically embraced.
All modern presidents have had an abiding incentive to remain in sync with the security managers, as have Congress and the courts, for a simple reason. No president, senator, or judge has wanted to confront the “if only” argument: “If only you had heeded the advice of the security experts, this devastating attack would not have occurred.” Better safe than sorry; safe means deferring to the security experts.
In addition to providing political cover, the appearance of public rapport invests double government with stability. Open feuding would unveil the power of the back-stage directorate, discrediting both institutions and causing the whole structure to “fall to earth.” That was the prediction of Walter Bagehot, the 19th-century English constitutional theorist who originated the concept of double government.
Trump, however, is unenthralled by experts — he wouldn’t be moving into the White House otherwise — so he has been indifferent to the effects of an open rupture with the security directorate. Either he doesn’t appreciate the need for legitimizing public harmony, or he’s decided to take on the whole bifurcated system and replace it with the single, unitary executive that the Constitution originally envisioned.
Trump’s response to former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden may have been predictive. Hayden said that, if given an order to kill families of suspected terrorists, “the American armed forces would refuse to act.” “They won’t refuse,” Trump replied. “They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me — if I say do it, they’re gonna do it.”
Hayden later dug in his heels. If Trump wants to resume waterboarding, Trump can “get his own damn bucket,” Hayden said. He called Trump a “useful fool” of the Russian government, “manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt.” But the breach between Trump and Hayden is the least of it. A gaping public rift has now developed between Trump and the national security establishment. An open letter from 122 Republican national security experts called Trump “fundamentally dishonest” and “utterly unfitted to the office.” Numerous current and former security officials have vowed they will never work for Trump or will openly defy presidential orders.
Trump, true to form, has counterattacked, disparaging the experts’ expertise. When the intelligence community concluded that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee and then disseminated purloined e-mails, Trump dismissed their assessment as unreliable. “Our country has no idea,” he said. “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC.” The military is unable to defeat ISIS, Trump proclaimed, because the “generals have been reduced to rubble.” “They have been reduced to a point where it’s embarrassing to our country,” he said, indicating he might fire a few. Retired Marine general John Allen summed things up: If Trump were elected, Allen said, “I think we would be facing a civil military crisis, the like of which we’ve not seen in this country before.”
Contrast this unprecedented discord with the image of harmony projected by earlier presidents. Barack Obama resisted the managers’ push for a large-scale troop buildup in Afghanistan — but facing continuing pressure, he then introduced the negotiated compromise as his own. Seeming to be taken by surprise at the Edward Snowden revelations, Obama later embraced NSA mass surveillance as his own program. The 2014 Senate torture report said that President George W. Bush was not briefed on waterboarding when it began — which was confirmed by the CIA’s General Counsel — but Bush said that, no, he had personally approved it. President Bill Clinton proposed ending the ban on gays in the military — and then presented “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as his own policy. After the Bay of Pigs disaster, President John F. Kennedy privately cursed the CIA for enticing him into it and said he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds” — only to allow, in a public press conference, that he was the responsible decision-maker.
Why the incentive to maintain public harmony? In short, to sustain legitimacy. Presidents must appear to be the decider to maintain public deference. If the curtain were pulled back and the security managers were revealed to exercise extravagant power, presidential credibility would collapse.
And so would that of the managers: With no electoral connection, their legitimacy derives from that of the president. Were a president to appear as presider rather than decider, compliance with presidential directives would be undermined. Legitimacy, in a system of double government, depends upon mutual cooperation to mask the two layers.
But wittingly or unwittingly, Trump has not bought into the duality. And given his popular base of support, he’ll have little incentive to do so.
Unlike Obama and earlier presidents, Trump has made a public show of disdaining experts. Trump presents himself as his own expert (“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me”) with no need to pour over background briefings or policy papers written by bean-counters from the swamp he’s been elected to drain. Trump not only has little to lose by crossing swords with Washington’s security glitterati — he fortifies support from those who put him into office by publicly taking on the Beltway power elite.
It’s possible, of course, that Trump could back off, become “presidential,” and join the long list of predecessors who made public peace with the security directorate. If Trump chooses that course, the substance of his security policies will differ little from Obama’s.
But it’s also possible that, loyal to his base and true to his seeming instincts, President Trump will remain as confrontational toward the security managers as he was as a candidate. What would a prolonged assault on the authority of expert insiders mean for Trump’s security policies?
It depends on whether security managers see the particular measure as raising or lowering the level of protection.
Trump would get considerable support for measures they see as beefing up security. The security managers are in the business of selling protection. They operate in an incentive structure where threat inflation and overprotection are rewarded, not penalized. When a president wants more rather than less protection, they are delighted to provide it.
With toothless congressional overseers and spineless judges manning the watchtowers, the likely upshot is therefore bureaucratic deference to more drone strikes and cyberattacks, tighter mass surveillance, weakened cellphone encryption, stepped up FBI investigations, and, yes, a resumption of torture. Following release of the Senate torture report, CIA Director John Brennan was asked whether the CIA could ever resume those practices. In a rare moment of candor, he replied: “I defer to the policy makers in future times.” Numerous officials who ran the CIA’s torture program still work for the agency. Not one has been prosecuted.
Any efforts by Trump to scale back protection would encounter opposition. Into this category fall the nuclear nonproliferation regime, sanctions against Russia, and the NATO, Japan, and South Korea security alliances. Security programs are “sticky down” — much harder to cut back than to maintain or expand. Efforts by Trump to ratchet down measures that the security managers have long nurtured would thus meet not only the usual bureaucratic slows but also resignations and occasional outright defiance.
Would such tactics bring Trump to heel?
Not likely. Resignation in protest is a time-honored way of registering dissent within the bounds of the system. Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than follow President Nixon’s order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. However, very few resignations have occurred in response to perceived governmental wrongdoing, particularly within the military. The cost in professional ostracism, economic hardship, and upended family life is too high for most to endure. And the payoff is typically slim. Willing replacements normally are plentiful, eager to get promoted, pick up and carry out orders where the dissenter left off. Richardson, Ruckelshaus, and Cox were distinguished, courageous public servants. Cox still got fired.
Similarly, direct disobedience could be dramatic — but it’s hard to see how it could work. Their functional autonomy notwithstanding, top military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials do serve at the pleasure of the president. An official who disobeyed a direct order from the president would be fired and replaced with someone who would obey.
Most importantly, in confronting bureaucratic insubordination, Trump would have a strong hand to play. Whether he realizes it or not, he would be launching a de facto assault on double government — with undertones of constitutional revivalism. Unlike Congress, the courts, and the presidency, the national security bureaucracy is not, after all, part of the constitutional system of checks and balances. Federal departments and agencies were never intended to check the elected officials who created them. Quite the opposite: Power was always believed to be delegated to the bureaucracy, not by it.
Trump’s public face-off with the security directorate is, in sum, a game-changer. Bagehot did not explain what happens when open discord causes double government to fall to earth. We may be about to find out.
Michael J. Glennon is a law professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. This article is adapted from the paperback edition of his book, “National Security and Double Government.”
There was no “mistake” about it.
Iraq was probably a “mistake”???
After completing burning the region with millions killed and/or displaced??? The ev!l mfs. These same btrds call Islam a cancer??
The true cancer of this world is white supremacy, and since these supremacists identify so closely with their religion, that would imply the true cancer is Christianity.
Iraq was probably a mistake???
After completing burning the region with a millions killed and/or displaced??? The ev!l mofers. These same bstrds call Islam a cancer??
The true cancer of this world is white supremacy, and since these supremacists identify so closely with their religion, that would imply the true cancer is Christianity.
I wonder which oligarch wrote his speech for him?
Killing “them” is fun and a hoot. I love brawling. – Mattis
You say: “…the fact that the “weapons of mass destruction” were never found…” but that ignores the redefinition we have made now under Mr. Obama. Now, Pressure Cookers and fireworks are defined as WMD’s. That makes the search much easier indeed!
P.S. Here’s one more tidbit for you:
Key background points on Mattis left out of this article for some reason:
1) Mattis sits on the board of General Dynamics since 2013:
With more than $13.6 billion in arms sales to the U.S. government annually (and $30.8 billion in total sales globally), General Dynamics (NYSE:GD) ranks as the third-largest defense contractor in the United States.
2) Mattis sits on the board of shady blood-testing company Theranos (along with Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Riley Bechtel, etc.) For the ridiculously dishonest behavior of that outfit, see:
(Link deleted per Intecept editorial policy)
Obviously these are key issues that any responsible journalist should have included in a background article on Mattis and issues involving his pick as Secretary of Defense; why they are neglected is hard to explain other than as a deliberate choice by editors and journalists.
In particular, the relationship between General Dynamics and Saudi Arabia should be considered here, given the Saudi record of financing ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria and Iraq as part of its regional geopolitical ambition strategy:
http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/21/can-a-massive-saudi-arms-deal-help-save-general-dy.aspx
General Dynamics stands to make an extra $346 million or so in profit from these tank and APC orders.
So how will these issues affect Mattis stance on Trump’s promise to work with Russia to defeat ISIS, if that’s not in the interest of Saudi Arabia? Will Saudi Arabia have a green light to inflict more mass civilian casualties in Yemen?
And another issue completely ignored: What does Mattis have to say about the 15-year American-NATO military presence in Afghanistan, is that going to continue for the next four years, too?
P.P.S. Articles like this are why I keep The Intercept in the “corporate news” folder. Along with the Guardian, the New York Times, Democracy Now, MSNBC, FOX News, etc. Who do you think you’re fooling?
“Probably a mistake”? It was one of the most idiotic retarded empire moves of the past 100 years, almost but not quite as stupid as the British Empire fighting World War One because it wanted to lock Germany out of Middle East oil concessions for the greater glory of empire. Now the American Empire is $6 trillion in debt thanks to the Iraq debacle, and under Obama has turned to promoting ISIS in cahoots with the Saudis and Israelis as part of some dumbfuck “PNAC – Project for a New American Century” BS cooked up in the late 1990s.
About as much chance of that as of Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, you sorry fucktards.
And what consolation is this to the ruined lives of Iraqis and US soldiers. Millions of us warned that the imbecile Bush would lead us to quagmire and we were right. Billions or trillions wasted that could have been spent for the betterment of America and the world. Bush helped create ISIS and now we shame the refugees who wish to flee their tyranny. How shameless can a country be?
One has to be extremely careful interpreting the words of Mattis.
When he states that the it was probably a mistake, he means something else. From his public positions regarding most of M.E. it is clear that he does not think the mistake was to destroy a country, displace millions of people, murder hundreds of thousands, injure tens of thousands of Americans, and loose thousands of American lives – no, that is not what he means.
Well said!
So the Butcher of Fallujah has deemed the US invasion of Iraq a ‘strategic mistake’, but slaughtering civilians and moderate opposition, something he did, well, I guess he, like the US (and its axis) government and media, feel that’s just normal, acceptable behaviour IF it is done by, or with the permission/collusion of, the US. On the other hand, doing the sort of block by block, building by building, fighting that is the only way to clear a city of an invading group of extremists who want to seize power with bullets when they discover that the population doesn’t support them, but actually does support the government, well that’s a war crime when the US is backing the extremists.
The Iraq war was not a mistake, it was genocide and heads should start rolling from inside or out without delay. Those who started the genocide started by threatening me with nuclear annihilation and should be hung from the neck until death in public square, somewhere in the Middle East.
The Iraq war, as you say, was not a mistake, it was a COVERUP. The last thing that those who backed a genocide willing, WMD using, civilian targeting dictator (Saddam) could let happen is him to be put before cameras and talk about what he knows…or worse, be sent to The Hague to name names. And if, as seemed very likely, he fell to a revolution (or Iranian backed coup, if you prefer) the one or the other would be on the table.
Yes, it is one thing for everyone to know the US (and France, the UK, etc) supplied him with arms, including chemical weapons, knowing he was using them to slaughter civilians, but it is an entirely different matter for trial standard evidence against specific, named, Americans, French, British military and intelligence members to be out there. Imagine if, for instance, he’d named the sitting American President as the person who suggested Saddam gas his own people.
The WMD’s were not in Iraq because he used them on Iran, he shot the whole load, just like we asked him to. Remember the Iran hostages? We wanted payback so we used Sadam to deliver retribution. Then we invaded to cover up.
This is how Mattis talked to neocons in 2013 regarding the downside of support for Israeli settlements and his support for the contemporaneous Israeli Palestinian negotiations lead by John (has no credibility Putin and Lavrov saved Barry and Johns sorry redlined asses in Syria negotiating Syrian chemical weapons destructing while at the same time providing asylum to our boy ed snowden) Note the photo on stage with Wolf at Aspen.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-us-general-we-pay-a-price-for-backing-israel/ JULY 25TH 2013
Make Aliyah: The Times of Israel: Home: Israel & the Region
Ex-US general: “We pay a price for backing Israel Slamming settlements, James Mattis, former commander of CentCom, tells crowd in Aspen that moderate Arabs are forced to hide support for America”
I had already linked to that just below, but it certainly deserves emphasis, as does Mattis’ frequent belligerent incoherence and occasional hysterically brutal dickhead glee, as well as his desire to be even more violent than the corporatist warmonger Obama (who is currently bombing at least seven countries).
He was a general in our military,he’s supposed to endorse and carry our violence in our name,at the whim,as he says,of civilian leadership.
He was not in the Salvation Army.
Give credit to the fact that these guys,when and if the shite hits the fan,are the people who die defending our nation.
When critics said US Grant was a drunk,Lincoln said give his brand of whiskey to all our generals.
IOW,war aint romper room.
He’s annihilating for corporate profits, and espousing what can only be called a psychotic pleasure at killing.
They are not “defending our nation,” they are protecting financial interests of multinational conglomerates.
Yes,you are correct that,right now,they are not defending our nation,but they have,and will in the future,unless we morph into butterflies.
Mattis has unquestioningly obeyed obviously corrupt orders and is (in my opinion) to some degree mentally unstable, plus he wants to be more aggressive than Obama (who, as I said, is currently bombing at least seven countries – and has excused the horrendous behavior of the Bush administration), and your attempt to portray him as noble is ridiculous. That his violent belligerence impresses you is very sad, for like Trump and Obama and all of the rest of them he knowingly serves the corrupt Deep State, not the people of America.
If you are not a plutocrat, active duty Pinkerton thugs have never lifted a pinky in defense of ‘your’ nation, as you call it, for a single second of your life.
It looks like a copy and paste but you are correct in the analysis. Winning at war requires absolute obedience and esprit de corps exhibited by Mattis. He is an archetype General and a Requirement to maintain our far flung Democratic Republic.
What you have to ask and it is a well guarded question,….What does he think and When did he think it and what will his education say about the Really important decisions.
If you are referring to the US you are mistaken. It may be far flung but it is neither democratic nor a republic.
they weren’t defending our nation. there were no wmd’s. it was an illegal war, and some people like manning went to prison over it. grant fought a real war against a real enemy.
Accurate observation. What leaders say to troops they are about to lead into battle is not “policy” and has to be interpreted in the specific context of military leadership. It’s also a true that military leaders (outside the very senior leadership at the Pentagon) generally don’t think or talk about politics. It is anathema. Soldiers don’t question legal orders of our Constitutionally empowered leadership – nor do we want them to.
Yeah. I couldn’t post a response to your original message. Thanks Masie.
James Mattis has described shooting people as “fun,” which to me indicates mental instability – regardless of his later apology for this. In my opinion there is no way he should ever be armed again, let alone put in charge of armed forces.
As can be seen from his Iraq remarks, much like Trump Mattis often vacillates between common sense lucidity and belligerent incoherence, making his statements overall a mish-mash of military idiocy and sporadically intelligent thought. He has commented boldly against the settlements in the West Bank, arguing that they are counterproductive, and his comments in this regard are in many respects quite cogent. But he has also claimed Iran is the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East (above Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, ISIS and the CIA!) – which reveals a stupidity that is anything but reassuring.
This also is alarming:
General Dynamics : Trump Names Gen. James Mattis as Pick for Defense Secretary
Link to his remarks on Israel: Ex-US general: We pay a price for backing Israel
About his shooting people being ‘fun’ comment. When Congress and the President, backed by the general American people, sends generals and troops to foreign countries with the task of killing thousands of people, it does strike me they won’t accomplish this by being nice apologetic people who feel bad about killing others. To be honest they probably have to see it as possibly even fun for them to mentally survive. Genuinely just thinking out loud, I’ve never thankfully had to kill anyone.
Sounds deranged to me, especially when the military’s killing is largely for corporate financial interests rather than noble reasons. I find conscientious objectors and people like Chelsea Manning who disobey the corrupt military-industrial complex to expose its wrongdoing far more impressive than a glorified murderer enjoying himself and not questioning obviously evil orders at the time they are given.
During my year in Vietnam, I frequently flew to places ranging from Saigon to Danang, as well as many in between. After talking to many troops, I never met one who voiced any glee about killing another human. My intelligence unit worked closely with 5th Special Forces personnel, and I became friends with several. I recall one conversation with one who had just returned to Nha Trang after having been in a fierce battle with numerous NVA troops. He had 27 stitches in his arm resulting from a gunshot wound while telling of having to shoot an NVA eight times before he dropped. The Green Berets and SEALS were the most efficient killing machines we had over there, but they all spoke matter-of-factly about killing and i never heard one express any kind of glee about what they were doing. Mattis is pathological, IMO.
Thanks for your post. Provides perspective for those of us who have never been in the military.
Thank you. I wanted to add that the men I met, to a man, never made fun of killing or of the other side in general; rather, they referred to them with great respect. I am most grateful that I never had to kill anyone to survive.
And to those, who like me, have never been in combat – although we fought it from the relative safety of our HQ bunkers.
If someone routinely kills a LOT of people and mentally survives this by telling himself and others that the killing is fun and a hoot, then he is already mentally insane.
In a “just” war, you can mentally deal with the killing required by telling yourself that what you are doing is for the greater good and is morally right (the message of the Bhagwad Gita). But Mattis knows that this is just not true for American imperialist wars.
The way I understand it is this: Osama bin Laden said the U.S. had to get its troops out of Saudi Arabia, so the U.S. had to get out; it took them a year and a half to do it. In order to justify the withdrawal of the troops as totally not submission to terrorism, Bush had to pursue their mission (defending the Fahd family from Iraq) by other means, which meant sexing up a bogus case against Iraq and launching a proper invasion instead.
But even this didn’t have to fail so miserably – defeat was snatched right from between the gnashing teeth of victory by the Bush Administration officials who overrode and dismissed Jay Garner’s plan for snap elections in 90 days. A quick transition to some kind of democracy, even if only at a local level, would have allowed some kind of ideological momentum to build up. It was only after that, with the years of twiddling over how to fix the Iraqi elections so the Shiites never quite win without establishing a US-like federal system, that things went so far wrong.
It failed because we had no intention of rescuing the Iraqi people from the terrible legacy of CIA dictators.
Democracy for Iraqis means anti American policy.
They hate US,and did before the invasion,and the invasion clearly was just revenge for 9-11,although Saddam had nothing to do with it.
Iraq regime-change was planned by PNAC before 9/11, and any relationship between the invasion and bin Laden’s demands that the US military leaves Saudi soil is tangential.
Despite the paywall on Foreign Policy magazine article above there is this.
http://journal.georgetown.edu/firing-a-general-for-the-sake-of-a-feasible-strategy-by-jeong-lee/
Riddle me this. How likely is it that James (torture doesn’t work as well as cigarettes and beer) Mattis will fail to share his ACTUAL opinions and
beliefs with ith the commander in chief who selected him for harboring independent views during Obamas tenure and (for the most part) only airing them internally. This good soldier will respect the chain of command
in a civilian capacity atop that same chain of command. Especially with Michael (“Sarin attacks had all the hallmarks of a false flag operation”) Flynn
advising.
This combined with the current (NATO agenda diminishing) European political free fall (EU members we are not American or German vassel states) I am now cautiously optimistic about Syria and particularly in Russias’ continuing successful efforts at constructive engagement with their European and American allies toward a post neocon (post Clinton) Raprochement with the west.
Now for the Trifecta Dana Rohrabacher for Secretary of State
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/12/04/dana-rohrabacher-secretary-state/
Rumor also has it that Rohrabacher was offered the deputy Secretary of State position, with the odious John Bolton in the top position, but that Dana refused on the grounds that Bolton’s foreign policy views are in many ways the exact opposite of Trump’s (and his own).
He serves on the Foreign Affairs and the Space and Technology Committees, and his notable positions have been his advocacy of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, a vote against the 2012 Defense Authorization Act on the grounds that it gave the government the power to detain Americans as well as non-citizens indefinitely, and a vote for the Iraq war which he later came to regret as a “mistake.”
Dana also voted to reign in the NSA when it counted most. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2013/h412
Rohrabacher would be an excellent choice to make a clean break with the disastrous foreign policy since at least the Madeline Albright era. We can fight real threats like IS and their allies instead of threatening Russia.
Mattis demonstrates that he is a good junk yard dog. Will sic em when ordered, and fall back on cue.
What a wonderful tool for the next President to wield, scaring the jee-bus out of our enemies.
Yeah…the enemies of the USA are scared…that they’ll die laughing…like OBL.
Ironic that OBL’s work is a “Mission Accomplished”, while folks like you prepare to fellate the next hotel doorman wearing 6 or more rows of medals.
—a hotel doorman wearing 6 or more rows of medals.—-
Actually he never got higher than the basement piss room !
Marines were known as bellhops to the swabbies(Navy) of ww2.
And when the floods or the hurricane or a natural disaster happens,you’ll be glad professional soldiers are around to help save your ass,and the worlds,as as happened many times.
Ooh-rah to you. They were called seagoing bellhops when I was in ’60-’64. And, when natural disasters occurs and the military gets involved, it is normally the Nat’l Guard. The “jarheads” are elsewhere disturbing some foreign country. Screw the military madness in this misguided country.
Pound sand, you pompous idiot…I spent 25 years in the military. Go play with your GI Joe doll.
More proof that whatever crazy thing the President orders … torture, needless war, violations of the law, whatever … ranking military officers and other senior bureaucrats will say and do whatever is necessary to hang onto their rank and privileges. We saw it in Vietnam. We saw it in our endless Middle Eastern wars. We will almost surely continue to see it.
That’s a lot of salad he’s got hanging on his shoulder . He’s an ” Aye, Aye , Sir Whore . “
Anyone remember Colin Powell’s cartoon presentation to the UN which was proof that Saddam had WMDs ?
” would he say “aye aye, sir” ?
Does a bear shit in the woods ?
pfffft. Shows his brave willingness to say exactly what everybody else is saying, at exactly the time they are saying, but not before. When the war in Iraq was the paying gig, he went along; when, years later, critiquing the war in Iraq is the paying gig, guess what, he’s your guy. Who exactly are the ongoing defenders of the war in Iraq having been a great idea? They’ve all recanted or retired or melted away.
The Iraq war helped to develop counter-insurgency techniques that will be quite useful to suppress the popular revolt in the United States when people realize they have been duped by Mr. Trump. So I wouldn’t necessarily call it a mistake.
A popular revolt can only succeed when and if the military tips over – if not from top brass than from the ground troops. A revolt will fail as soon as the military signs with the establishment. Recently we could see this in China (Tsquare), Cairo, Turkey etc.
Mattis has quite a few dangerous positions, from his claims of an IS-Iran link, to his harshness towards Iran, to his eagerness to kill. That said, for his willingness to at least treat Iraq as a “mistake”- something many Democrats, many Republicans, and Joe Lieberman will not admit- he is far above many others. As for his willingness to kill, it’s more justifiable for defense secretaries than for diplomats (contra Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton).
Nice try Intercept. Dare to wonder how skilled General Mattis is on the strategic and political importance of the Texas Towers…? He is no fool…….while WMD’s may have been the mantra in the press, he knew full well that “Its the Oil, Stupid”…!! The least you could do Intercept would be to have Mr. Schwartz review the DoD political need for radar platforms on “old” offshore oil platforms. Do you boys in the editorial wonk canteen have a clue about the staged North Dakota Pipeline approval compared to the approval of the Yellowstone Caldera National Geo-thermal energy pipeline network..? Dare to wonder how General Mattis would review that strategic battlefield..!!
HE …WILL…NOT….make the same mistake twice..!!!
Not a mistake but a crime.
To quote the sitting President (well, not quite, but it is his position) ‘It’s not a war crime if the American President does it.’
You do have to wonder, if Obama ends up sitting down for a days long interview with a journalist who is after THE story, not following a script, he’d end up uttering those words to explain why Bush wasn’t indicted over the torture program, or why he (Obama) shouldn’t be indicted for his drone death squad program.
Fallujah? Is he the one responsible for shelling the hospitals, so there would be no photos or videos of wounded Iraqis? How about the killing of civilians trying to escape via the river? )Because they couldn’t get out by road.)
If so, he is a war criminal, that should be in prison, not in the Cabinet.
Sigh…not “probably” as in the headline.
His grasp of the obvious no doubt helped the good general as he punched his ticket whilst climbing the ladder…”orders are orders”.
Shwartz you are a propagandist. Obama retained Bill Gates as Defense Secretary. Gate supported both the surge and prosecuted the Iraq War. Of course Intercept readers will never know that by reading this propaganda. They also won’t know that Obama was the first president in history to retain all political appointees from the Bush’s pentagon, including Gates.
Obama was never really against Iraq; he voted for all of the war supplementals … until he announced for presidency. The representatives against the war voted against these supplementals that Bush asked for.
I ask Shwartz … why is it OK for Obama to appoint a SecDef who was running the Iraq war and the surge, yet wrong for Trump to pick someone who thinks it might have been a mistake?
What doublethink!
Did you read a different article rather than the one above?
YOU LIE! Every word you type is a lie.
Go back to KKKlanworld.
Huh? Read it again. You’re missing the point. Yeah, Mattis says he was against it…..but he went along anyway. the question is would he do that again under Trump?
Would he say “aye aye, sir”?
Does a bear shit in the woods ?
Thanks, Jamie, for putting intercept articles into perspective.
Robert Gates, rather than Bill Gates.
What’s the difference?
Lets see William is worth 82.7 billion Robert approximately 5 million for a rather significant difference of 82.695 billion I would say.
Hundreds of thousands killed and wounded..shattered lives..orphaned children.. a city and country in ruins. Hundreds of billions spent that could have been used elsewhere.
IT WAS A “MISTAKE?”
Is that all you can say get your head out of your ass.
100%agree, but a Start– you willnot even get that from some.
That is sufficient, if he was not in the decision.
Iraq is hell.
The darkness of the US soul.
He could have simply resigned his commission. If he was opposed at the time he could have done that; so, perhaps he wasn’t opposed that much or at all.
Have a look at the stories of brokenhearted families because they lost Marines in Iraq. For those families, Mattis’ words will cut to the quick whether he means them or not.
And here we go, this gets to the heart of military service:
How in the fuck does Mattis square up these two statements:
• “fight with a happy heart and strong spirit” to unseat a dictator who “murdered the Iraqi people … and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction.”
and
• “But when it’s all over and done with, ladies and gentlemen, your military is obedient to the Constitution that says we obey the president. We swear an oath to protect that Constitution, and we live up to it.”
What does unseating a dictator w/ or w/o WMD have to do with upholding and defending the U.S. Constitution?
When you realize that it was the POTUSs decision to go to war,backed by every MSM,politician and idiot in America,and the generals job to carry it out,you will all might realize that pointing the finger at this guy in righteous indignation is hypocritical,and the fact is GG agreed also at the time,so point fingers at him.
“He could have simply resigned his commission. If he was opposed at the time he could have done that; so, perhaps he wasn’t opposed that much or at all.
Have a look at the stories of brokenhearted families because they lost Marines in Iraq. For those families, Mattis’ words will cut to the quick whether he means them or not.”
If those marines opposed the war or didn’t want to die they could have gone AWOL or refused to fight. I mean if you’re going to say a general should’ve done something like that, than you should accept that the troops could’ve/should’ve as well. I don’t see much difference (well, aside from a general has more legal avenues to refuse/retire/resign).
Trump looks more and more like an orthodox Republican, who Democrats always find easy to work with; all the hysterical shrieking about the destruction of “American values” (which have degenerated into protectionism and global selfishness, which Trump exemplifies) are unlikely to change anything positively.
Instead of wasting time and money on recounts or banning the Electoral College, progressives should focus on the economic issues that won Trump the election. It’s all very fine to promote equality, but it should be remembered that people tend to be much more open to different lifestyles when their own lives are not threatened by poverty.
“Elsewhere, Mattis has suggested that there is some link between ISIS and Iran.”
I’d sure like to see some evidence of this as ISIS is very definitely a Sunni Islam off-shoot which loathes the apostate Shi’ites and Iran is most decidedly Shia.
His linked statement: “‘What is the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked by ISIS? One. And it’s Iran. That is just more than happenstance, I’m sure.'”
The idea that because ISIS hasn’t attacked Iran that means they are buddies and not fundamentally enemies is just nuts. Maybe the five threats he [Mattis] said that the country [Iran] poses: nuclear, maritime, ballistic missile, cyber and through its Quds Force. . . .” ought to perhaps be considered a deterrent one that any rational, non-war-mongerer would understand. Does that make ISIS smarter than ?
IS not attacking Iran? They haven’t attacked the US either. So……we’re allies? ; )
A thousand dead Iranian soldiers shows that not only is ISIS attacking Iran, Iran is attacking ISIS.
Like Vietnam (unlike WWI and WWII) Politicians deciding how to run a war create these never ending conflicts. Let the military professionals do their job and end (or even decide to never enter) these conflicts.