Mattis Is Wrong—This Scholar-General Was RightAmerican Greatness, Dec 21, 2018, Joseph Duggan
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Sixteen months ago, Mattis was riding high within a Trump Administration with a different makeup. In August 2017, he joined other top officials in getting the president to postpone carrying out his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“The game plan agreed upon at Camp David,†said a report in RealClearDefense, “was a triumph for Mattis and [then-national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R.] McMaster, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, a military analyst. The two worked hand-in-hand with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Vice President Mike Pence.â€
McMaster had arranged for Pence to cut short an official visit to Latin America, becoming a diplomatic no-show in key capitals in order to join Tillerson and Mattis in strong-arming Trump into postponing the Afghan withdrawal. Four-star General John Kelly, who recently had become White House chief of staff, also was one of the advisers urging Trump to keep American soldiers in Afghanistan.
By caving to a national security adviser he said “looks like a beer salesman†and a chief diplomat he now recalls as “dumb as a rock,†Trump won “Strange New Respect†in The Swamp. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) praised Trump’s decision. Across the aisle, Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said it was a positive step inasmuch as it went in the direction McCain wanted to go.
Today Trump is behaving with the shrewdness and self-awareness of a civilian commander-in-chief who knows, with Clemenceau, that war is too important to be left to the generals. Trump recognizes too, with another French leader, Charles de Gaulle, that the cemeteries are full of indispensable men.
Mattis, it must not be denied, is a patriot and a man of learning and intellectual discipline. But he’s not infallible. Military and civilian leaders with comparable qualities have disagreed and will disagree with him.
As the Trump Administration implements the president’s promises to get troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, the wisdom of one of the great Cold War scholar-generals should be a major policy guide.
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https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/21/mattis-is-wrong-this-scholar-general-was-right/