Gen. Mattis proves malleable on China
Hell hath no fury like a general scorned.
Just look at former U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, President Trump’s first secretary of defense, who unhappily left the Trump administration over a dispute over Syrian war policy.
After ISIS was defeated, Trump wanted all U.S. troops out of Syria. Mattis wanted them to stay.
Trump prevailed, or so he thought. So Mattis, known as “Mad Dog,” resigned over the issue — as well as being kept in the dark over other matters — in 2018. Trump, who later falsely claimed he fired him, went after Mattis later for criticizing Trump’s response to rioting in the cities. Trump called Mattis “The world’s most overrated general. Glad he’s gone.”
Mattis has never gotten over his verbal brawl with Trump, leading to a twist in the adage that old soldiers never die. They just get even.
As it was, James Jeffrey, outgoing senior U.S. special envoy to Syria, said recently, “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal. We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.”
So much for Trump taking on the deep state.
Progressives, who normally hold military people in contempt, have made Mattis into a hero for turning on Trump, even though Trump gave him a job.
In a recent piece in Foreign Affairs, Mattis, with the applause of Trump-hating progressives ringing in his ears, attacked Trump’s “America First” policy, and called on President-elect Joe Biden to “eliminate” it.
Written with three fellow globalists, Mattis said that Trump’s strengthening of the military was not enough, and that the country needed international partners to protect it.
Trump’s current “America First” policy, the quartet wrote, reflects “a basic ignorance” over the strategic depth alliances and international institutions can provide.
The progressives who have embraced Mattis for his attacks on Trump are the same people who looked the other way when Mattis was critical of the sainted Barack Obama.
This came about when Obama unceremoniously dumped Mattis as commander of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East in 2012. Mattis at the time was dealing with Iran’s terrorist actions in the region while Obama was sucking up to the mullahs in Tehran.
“Each step along the way,” Mattis wrote in his book “Call Sign Chaos, “I argued for political clarity” which Obama did not provide. “I was leaving a region aflame and in disarray. The lack of an integrated regional strategy had left us adrift, and our friends confused. We were offering no leadership or direction. I left my post deeply disturbed.”
Then, when Obama failed to enforce his “red line” against Syrian dictator Basha Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians, Mattis said, “This was a shot not heard around the world.”
What is also interesting is Mattis’ apparent shift of his views on China now that he has been hired by The Cohen Group, an international consulting firm that lobbies and specializes in multimillion-dollar business deals in China.
The firm is headed by fellow former Defense Secretary William Cohen, a onetime Republican U.S. senator from Maine. It has two offices in China and a staff made up of former military people and government officials. It states that “China is a market of enormous opportunity and complexity.”
In his letter of resignation to Trump on Dec. 20, 2018, Mattis called for an “unambiguous” approach to China and Russia. “It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions — to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.”
In foreign policy, Mattis, now an influence peddler, changed his views on China, suddenly sounding more like a soft-on-China Joe Biden than a hard-on-China Donald Trump.
“Cooperation across different ideological systems is difficult but necessary, and there should be opportunities to cooperate with China in areas of overlapping interests, such as a pandemic response, climate change and nuclear security,” Mattis wrote.
Trump’s Mad Dog is now Biden’s Pet Dog.