What Kind of Defense Do We Have in Mattis?
This is an excerpt from the 2018 Steve Dustcircle book, Trump’s Cabinet: The Rise of Each Appointed Deplorable, available in ebook and paperback from Amazon.com. The book contains links to multiple references and citations.
JAMES MATTIS, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
Although the United States Army, Navy and Marines were developed in 1775 after the U.S. won its independence from Britain control, the office of the Department of Defense wasn’t formally invented until a few years after World War 2, in 1949. Since 1950, the Defense department not only umbrellas the Army, Marines and Navy, but also the Coast Guard, Air Force, and Joint Chiefs.
The head of the alliance of defense military arms is run by the office of the Secretary of Defense, otherwise known as SecDef. A similar past role would be the now-defunct Secretary of War.
This position lies in the realm of the Executive Branch, and answers to none but the President. There has never been a woman or a person of color in American history to head the Department of Defense nor its predecessors.
Nominated and confirmed to the position under President Donald Trump is retired Marine, James Norman Mattis. His nickname is Mad Dog.
James Mattis was born in Washington state in 1950 to an immigrant mother who was originally from Canada but had once worked in South Africa in intelligence. His father was involved with nuclear weaponry during the 1940s. Their home had no television; they fully entertained themselves with books. To this day, he still loves books, with it being said that he has easily over 7,000 books in his personal collection.
Mattis graduated from high school in 1968, earned a history degree from Central Washington University three years later. He eventually returned to school, obtaining a master’s degree in international security in 1994 from the National War College in Washington, D.C.
Mattis has never married, though he was engaged once to a woman who broke off the wedding just days beforehand. He is called — not only Mad Dog — but the Warrior Monk, as he is pretty much a husband to war and the study of attacking other countries.
James Mattis has quite the military resume since enlisting in the Marines in 1969, a year after he graduated from high school. He has had his hand in every United States war since the early 1990s from varying leadership positions: The Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War (not to be confused with the Kuwait situation).
It seems he likes to take America into foreign lands to kill brown Muslim people. For example, a 2005 quote sums up Mattis’ outlook on Muslim men:
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. Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.
Nevertheless, in 2006, Mattis was chosen to take command of the United States Joint Forces Command and was promoted to Four-Star General.
When he was in office, President Barack Obama placed little faith in Mattis, saying that Mattis was too antsy to get involved in a conflict with Iran. Mattis retired from the Marine Corps in 2013.
That same year, James Mattis entered the business realm, serving as a consultant for FWA and being on the Board of Directors for both General Dynamics, a weaponry company, and Theranos, a biotech company. He also joined the advisory board for the soldier-supporting non-profit, Spirit of America.
The company, Theranos, gained notoriety after being accused of trying to circumvent FDA regulations with its military blood-testing technology.
Almost immediately after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and promising that America would have an ever-expanding military, he began courting James Mattis in November of 2016 for the position that he now holds: Secretary of Defense.
However, the National Security Act of 1947 forbids anyone from becoming SecDef without a seven-year waiting period for military personnel. This law was waived, Mattis being the second person ever to have this law avoided for. There will be no seven year cooling-off period for the mad dog.
Surprisingly, Mattis is supportive of the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine, where two countries can co-exist in the area, and frowns upon apartheid and Israelites invading and forming “settlements” in Palestinian territory without permission.
However, not being for a two-state solution, one would have to choose which country would exist, angering the other and possibly causing further conflict. Conflict has nevertheless existed ever since the United States helped the Jewish people overthrow the existing Palestine country in 1948. Needless to say, there is lingering anger and oppression.
It is the country of Iran that Mattis feels is the most threatening in the Middle East. He wants Iran to not have nuclear weapons, or nuclear power to run electricity on. ISIS apparently has a strong foothold in Iran and seems to be the major concern for Mattis.
James Mattis doesn’t seem as racist or Islamophobic as some of those within his party — the Republicans — as he praises the United States’ friendship with the United Arab Emirates and the Israel-neighboring country, Jordan.
But, for former President Barack Obama’s peacekeeping deals in the Middle East, Mattis has been quite incendiary, calling Obama naive, absent, and nuts. In February of 2017, he also criticized Russia for not being ready to help with anti-ISIS operations.
The bad thing for Mattis is that there have been much more civilian casualties from his war-showmanship. In 2003, he was heard saying to his fellow Marines, “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” And he’s also been overheard saying, “I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
Even though Mattis has been accused of war crimes in Iraq, “He’ll be a terrific secretary of defense,” said Kori Schake, a former defense adviser to John McCain, a prominent “never Trump” conservative, and Mattis’s co-editor on a recent book, printed The Guardian.
“[U]nder Mattis’ command, shot at ambulances and aid workers. They cordoned off the city, preventing civilians from escaping. They posed for trophy photos with the people they killed,” states Reveal News.
On an unrelated good note, Mattis believes in the fact of climate change and wishes for America to do what it can to help.
Originally published at stevedustcircleus.wordpress.com on May 2, 2018.