How ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis earned his spurs
Trump’s pick for defence secretary likes ‘ brawling’
On Thursday, at a postelection victory rally in Cincinnati, president- elect Donald Trump announced his pick for secretary of defence.
“We are going to appoint Mad Dog Mattis as our secretary of defence,” Trump said.
The Mad Dog in question was retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, who for more than 40 years served in the Marine Corps. The 66- year- old general, called a “warrior monk” by his peers for his depth of knowledge and lack of family — he never married — is also known to turn a memorable phrase, including: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
Mattis would be only the second retired general to serve as defence secretary, the first being George C. Marshall in 1950- 51 during the Korean War after earlier serving as U. S. secretary of state and playing a key role in creating closer ties with Western Europe after the Second World War.
And if the nickname Mad Dog gives you pause, well, the retired general does not like it much either, according to NBC.
( For his part, Trump seems fond of it, also using the name in his sole tweet about Mattis.)
The nickname stuck to Mattis following the second battle of Fallujah, the hardest fight of the Iraq War. Here’s t he Los Angeles Times, in a profile about the “confident, jaunty” general in April 2004, a few months before the battle: “Behind his back, troops call him ‘ Mad Dog Mattis,’ high praise in Marine culture.”
Mattis retired in 2013 after serving for three years as commander of the U. S. Central Command, responsible for directing America’s wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of the 9/ 11 attacks, Mattis commanded the Marines who launched an early amphibious assault into Afghani s t an and established a U. S. foothold in the Taliban heartland.
As the first wave of Marines moved toward Kandahar, Mattis declared: “The Marines have landed, and now we own a piece of Afghanistan.”
Two years later, he helped lead the invasion into Iraq in 2003 as the two-star commander of the 1st Marine Division.
In 2005, he raised eyebrows when he told a San Diego forum that it was “fun to shoot some people.”
According to a recording of his remarks, Mattis said, “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 up front with you, I like brawling.”
He added: “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.”
Mattis was counselled to choose his words more carefully but those words do tend to justify the nickname.
But though Mad Dog has a cachet among Marines, a quick rundown of historic characters who also bore t he name i ndicates why some would be reluctant to embrace it.
As far as the Library of Congress database is concerned, the first and most famous Mad Dog was Vincent (Mad Dog) Coll.
Coll, a mafia enforcer in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s, was so named by then New York mayor Jimmy Walker after the hit man fatally shot a five- yearold, struck by a wayward bullet in a mob fight.
That’s not to say celebrated Mad Dogs never lived. Sports players given t he nickname Mad Dog may earn it through their athletic intensity but also because their surnames include “mad,” such as the Los Angeles Lakers’ Mark Madsen, Canadian hockey player John Madden, MLB pitcher Gregory Maddux and New Zealand rugby winger Joe Maddock.
Edgar ( Mad Dog) Ross, a professional boxer with a 50- fight undefeated streak in the late 1970s, was remembered as a complicated character.
“Edgar was as tough a human being as I’ ve ever s een, and f earless,” his friend Jimmy Montgomery told the Tuscaloosa News, after Ross’s death in 2012. But Ross was described by others as “too mean for football,” using boxing as an outlet for violence.
While incarcerated, Canadian bank t hief Roger ( Mad Dog) Caron wrote a memoir, Go- Boy!, which sold 600,000 copies and earned the Governor General’s award for non- fiction, in 1977.
Then prime minister Pierre Trudeau would go on to call Caron a “great Canadian,” according to The Daily Telegraph, after the thief ’s parole.