Well, at least you can say this administration isn’t boring. Within the last day during this Christmas season the president, channeling Lord Palmerston, has announced that we are officially leaving Syria, good, and that Secretary of Defense Mattis is leaving in February, not so good on the face of it.
Trump and Mad Dog have disagreed on a plethora of issues like the Paris climate deal, the Iran nuclear deal, tariffs, moving our embassy in Israel, and regarding those of confused sexual identity serving in the ranks of the military. The decision on Syria was probably the final straw for the both of them.
Mattis said as much in his resignation letter, “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.”
Which is fine, as the president definitely does deserve a SecDef who thinks generally like he does and Mattis is free to work for whomever he pleases. He did a great job at the Pentagon restoring fighting spirit and military effectiveness to a system hurt by the intentional injuries of the Obama administration. This is a damned good Marine who follows orders while in uniform or under command. The problem for the president is he will soon be constrained by neither status.
Mattis is rightfully respected for his record and the image that has gone with it. The warrior monk with the pithy aphorisms has amused many of us, especially with the line about the peace-protesting couple. His very being seems designed as a personal affront to the values of the left. Also to a degree even as a basic insult to millennial males, except the ones who serve under the colors, and to the corps of pronounced civilians everywhere. Heh.
Which means he’s wildly popular with the GOP base. Strangely, he has suddenly become quite well liked by Democrats, just as they very recently discovered their hatred of Russia and their love of American military intervention fifty years too late.
Yeah, yeah, if Trump discovered a cure for cancer they’d oppose him for throwing oncologists out of jobs.
If the good Marine starts to talk out of school, or is flattered into doing so by the Washington establishment (read: deep state to those of you without historical knowledge) then the president will have some headaches. While still strong with his base, including me, his strength comes from what he has done and what he stands for. If we start chattering about who he is and his character in comparison with Mattis, which the Dems and their lapdog press have already started doing, then the brash, garish, and mouthy Queens mogul may not hold up very well with a number of his core supporters against the heroic General James N. Mattis in Marine dress blues.
Let’s hope the soon to be former cabinet member is Jarhead enough to reject the upcoming blandishments of the DC gravy train and stays off cable television for quite some time. My money is on his integrity and Devil Dog sense of honor. He won’t jump ship. I think.
Now to the straw, camel, and associated matters.
The general is a consummate warrior. As such he is loyal to his allies like the Kurds. He remembers how we sold out the South Vietnamese. That memory still burns any of us who ever wore the American uniform. There are even reports of a sizable U.S. redeployment out of Afghanistan in the new year. Mattis may think of a mission not perfectly accomplished, what mission ever is, and allies left behind to the tender mercies of our enemies and rivals. But Mattis was never elected to anything, yet, and it is in the nature of a warrior to enjoy the fight. Think Lee and Patton. Mattis has admitted and celebrated that propensity on numerous occasions. That’s what makes him so excellent a military leader. But as a strategic thinker? Welllll…
Trump campaigned and was elected on his promise not to get us into open-ended foreign adventures like Iraq, the invasion of such he has regularly said was a mistake. The American people knew that and made him president. President not of our allies but president of the United States of America. Thus, here revealing my Palmerstonian and Morgenthauian self, his primary responsibility is the American national interest and not the national interest of our said allies. Not that we should run out on our friends. But that friendship must be based upon what is appropriate for this nation in a mutually acceptable framework with our geopolitical partners. So the question presents itself, added on to two other quicksand-like operations where one should have been fast and brutal and the other never began: What is our realpolitik national interest in Syria, especially now that ISIS is neutralized?
To make them safe for democracy in a silly Wilsonian/Bush the Younger process? Do I even have to answer that? Regime change? Nope, the Assads are mobbed up by the Russians and Iranians and, given massive fluctuations in the region over the decades, seem to be like cockroaches that survive beyond expectation. Does a war with those two thugs make sense to topple Assad and just put another tyrant, one we may not control, in his place? Can the emerging alliance of Israel, the Sauds, the Gulf States, Jordan, Egypt, etc., handle the situation and keep ISIS in check better than we can? Even if not, what is the national interest in having overt boots on the ground in Syria itself when we have lots of assets close and covert assets that remain in place? To be cold and clear, is the death of many Kurds or Syrian civilians worth the lives of a company of U.S. Marines in blood or the cost of another never-ending martial effort in national treasure? Taking into account the historical merry-go-round of the region where no action external to the Levant seems to be a long-term solution, I think not.
Yes, he’ll take heat from certain supporters, some international allies, and the usual suspects. But this president recognizes the folly of good money thrown after bad. He understands, quoting the aforementioned former member of the upper house of the British Parliament, “Nations have no eternal friends nor perpetual enemies. They have only eternal and perpetual interests.” It is in ours to have a SecDef who agrees with his president and a president who knows whose interests he has been elected to serve.
That is undoubtedly a proper Christmas present to give to the good Lord Palmerston.
