Mad Dog or soldier-scholar? Debate over US defence pick
“MAD DOG” or “Warrior Monk”? Perhaps simply, “Chaos”? Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defence, General James Mattis, has a colourful set of nicknames earned over a long and distinguished career. His tendency for plain speaking together with his fondness for the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius make him one of the most interesting appointments in the new administration.
“After all these weeks, there’s finally an adult in the room,’ said comparing him to the renowned US Second World War leader General George S Patton. “Mattis is the outstanding soldier-scholar of his generation,” said one Washington insider.
But the voices from the American Jewish community are not uniformly supportive. A statement released by the right-ofcentre Zionist Organisation of America said Mr Mattis had made statements “hostile to Israel” and called on Mr Trump not to appoint him. The statement Outspoken: Mattis has since been taken down from the ZOA website. The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs called the criticism “ill-founded and unfair” while noting they objected to remarks by Mr Mattis in which he blamed Israel for the impasse in the peace talks.
The controversy centres on remarks made by Mr Mattis at the Aspen Institute in July 2013, when he praised Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempts to broker a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians as “valiant” and warned that continued Israeli control over territory Palestinians see as their future state was “unsustainable”. He also described Israel’s dilemma in stark terms: “Either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say that the Arabs don’t get to vote — apartheid. And that didn’t work too well the last time I saw that practised in a country.”
However, as chief of the US Central Command, the body that oversees Middle East operations, Mr Mattis was a vocal opponent of President Obama’s efforts to reach a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Earlier this year, he described Iran as “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East”. That kind of language will go down well with Benjamin Netanyahu. Still, Israelis will be waiting to see which version of Mr Mattis turns up at the Pentagon on January 20.