I know that the conventional wisdom is that incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton will be whispering sweet war stories in Trump's ear, and there's very good reason to believe that Bolton being a part of the regime dramatically increases the odds of America going to war during Trump's term. But what does Defense Secretary Jim Mattis think of all this?
Yeah, there's a reason he's called Mad Dog, the guy definitely knows his way around a sand table or two and didn't exactly shy from blowing stuff up as Obama's CENTCOM head. The guy's record goes all the way back to the first Gulf War as a battalion commander with the Marines. He's seen the elephant, and he's put men in harm's way and seen some of them not come home.
And you know what? He doesn't like John Bolton one bit.
Washington is now consumed by a debate over whether Mr. Trump’s new team plans to govern as far to the right as it talks.
So far, the incoming national security adviser, John R. Bolton, has declared that his past comments are “behind me.” Hours after his selection was announced, Mr. Bolton vowed that he would find ways to execute the policies that Mr. Trump was elected on, but that he would not tolerate slow-walking and leaks from bureaucrats he dismissed as “munchkins.”
Some who know Mr. Bolton and his operating style predict titanic clashes.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the retired general who has argued for keeping the Iran deal intact and warned that military confrontation with North Korea would result in “the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes,” told colleagues on Friday that he did not know if he could work with Mr. Bolton. The White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, another retired four-star general, was also unenthusiastic about Mr. Bolton’s hiring.
I've given up on Kelly, he's an unapologetic racist asshole anyway. But Mattis is the guy actually running the Pentagon, and I'm hoping he'll put a leash on Bolton.
The problem is that's what McMaster was supposed to do as NSA and he's gone, the triumvirate of "Trump's generals" were supposed to be the "adults in the room" protecting America from Trump's worst impulses.
That's not coming to pass. One is gone. One has been rumored on the way out for months. Only Mattis seems to be the stable one.
Last July, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson arranged a tutoring session at the Pentagon for President Donald Trump in the secure, windowless meeting room known as “The Tank.” The plan was to lay out why American troops are deployed in far-flung places across the globe, like Japan and South Korea. Mattis spoke first.
“The postwar, rules-based international order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation,” Mattis told the president, according to two meeting attendees. The secretary of defense walked the president through the complex fabric of trade deals, military agreements and international alliances that make up the global system the victors established after World War II, touching off what one attendee described as a “food fight” and a “free for all” with the president and the rest of the group. Trump punctuated the session by loudly telling his secretaries of state and defense, at several points during the meeting, “I don’t agree!” The meeting culminated with Tillerson, his now ousted secretary of state, fatefully complaining after the president left the room, that Trump was “a fucking moron.”
Trump is said to divide the members of his Cabinet into first-tier “killers” and second-tier “winners.” Mattis is indisputably a killer, but he’s also something rarer: a sometime loser — of policy arguments, that is — who manages to disagree with the president without squandering his clout or getting under Trump’s skin. He opposed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change accord, decertify the Iran deal, slap tariffs on steel and aluminum, and move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He opposes the president’s proposed ban on transgender service members and has reportedly ignored requests from the White House to see plans for a military strike against North Korea.
Yet Mattis has been able to present the president with views he doesn’t like without bearing the brunt of his frustration. The departure of H.R. McMaster, his national security adviser, was announced Thursday amid rumors that the president is poised to fire beleaguered Cabinet secretaries like David Shulkin of Veterans Affairs and Ben Carson of Housing and Urban Development, and is agonizing over whether to dismiss John Kelly, his chief of staff. Mattis’ name has been conspicuously absent. One senior administration official called him “bulletproof.”
Of the Cabinet selections and staff picks cheered by Trump critics, including McMaster, Kelly and former chairman of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, Mattis is the only one who seems to still have job security. Trump remains as enthused about Mattis, one of his first Cabinet picks, as he was when he tapped him for the job in December 2016, according to several White House aides.
For now.
The one thing standing between Trump and war with Iran and North Korea is a guy nicknamed "Mad Dog".
Let that sink in.
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