This overwhelming support goes beyond enthusiasm for his record of military competence. His sometimes shocking public statements and quiet triumphs point to both an extraordinary level of compassion and the capacity for ferocious lethality.
.. Mattis chose a path in life that has brought him repeatedly into mortal combat with the most barbaric evil of our time, Islamist terrorism. Yet he continues to defeat it with insight, humor, fighting courage, and fierce compassion not only for his fellow Marines who volunteer to follow him through hell’s front door but also for the innocent victims of war. He encouraged his beloved Marines in Iraq with this advice: “Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
.. Robert H. Scales, a retired United States Army major general, described him as “one of the most urbane and polished men I have known.” Mattis’s personal library of more than 7,000 books — including many obscure, scholarly titles — is as famous as his habit of carrying a personal copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius with him into battle.
.. People perhaps mistake his ferocious aggression for a lack of discipline. Anyone who has served with him will tell you just the opposite: As a field commander, he maintains strict discipline, even sleep discipline, continually striving for “brilliance in the basics.”
.. His competence and level-headedness are so trusted that the president of the United States has given him essentially a free hand to fight America’s wars as he sees fit. Characteristically, in announcing the change of policy toward ISIS from one of “attrition” to “annihilation,”
.. The Art of War, a recently translated treatise dating from the fifth century b.c., by Sun-Tzu, a legendary Chinese general. The emphasis on duality in Sun-Tzu’s philosophy, the yin and yang of war, coincided with Mattis’s deep appreciation for the ebb and flow of the natural world and human interaction. Sun-Tzu’s concept of “winning hearts and minds” was a natural fit for Mattis and would serve him well in the wars to come in the East.
.. This human aftermath of the American military retreat from Vietnam and resulting political instability crowded every available inch of deck space around Mattis. Refugees filled the sweaty hold of the ship, clutching their children and meager possessions and often shaking with fear and trauma. This was Mattis’s first real-world experience of war as a Marine. As the Navy’s ground troops — the first in and often the last out of smaller, Third World conflicts — Marines frequently end up with the responsibility for evacuation of war victims. Compassion is a necessary part of an officer’s training, and Mattis’s was put to the test as he shared overheated sleeping spaces, food, and few toilets, often for days on end, with successive swarms of desperate, frequently ill people who didn’t speak English.
.. A few days before departure, Alice suddenly realizes that as a Marine’s wife, she will move frequently to different parts of the world and will face the constant threat of having officers knocking on her door one day in full dress uniform to deliver the worst possible news. As much as she respects the sacrifices that Marines make, she is not prepared to do the same. She insists that Mattis resign, that he choose her or the Corps — he cannot have both.
.. “Y’know, Dave, the privilege of command is command. You don’t get a bigger tent.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450464/james-mattis-no-better-friend-no-worse-enemy?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20170819%20Weekend%20Jolt&utm_term=Jolt
.. He will never marry. Instead, he will devote himself to his adopted family of Marines.
.. Mattis told Krulak that the young officer who was scheduled to have duty on Christmas Day had a family, and he had decided it was better for the young officer to spend Christmas Day with his family. So he chose to have duty on Christmas Day in his place.
Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost
President Trump buoyed the white nationalist movement on Tuesday as no president has done in generations — equating activists protesting racism with the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who rampaged in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend
.. angrily asserting that so-called alt-left activists were just as responsible for the bloody confrontation as marchers brandishing swastikas, Confederate battle flags, anti-Semitic banners and “Trump/Pence” signs.
.. But members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private. National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, who are Jewish, stood by uncomfortably as the president exacerbated a controversy that has once again engulfed a White House in disarray.
.. And of the demonstrators who rallied on Friday night, some chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, he said, “You had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”
Since the 1960s, Republican politicians have made muscular appeals to white voters, especially those in the South, on broad cultural grounds. But as a rule, they have taken a hard line on the party’s racist, nativist and anti-Semitic fringe. Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush roundly condemned white supremacists.
.. In 1991, the first President Bush took on Mr. Duke, who was then seeking the governor’s seat in Louisiana, saying, “When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society.”
.. But his unifying tone, which his staff characterized as more traditionally presidential, quickly gave way to a more familiar Trump approach.
No sooner had he delivered the Monday statement than he began railing privately to his staff about the press. He fumed to aides about how unfairly he was being treated, and expressed sympathy with nonviolent protesters who he said were defending their “heritage,” according to a West Wing official.
.. Mr. Trump prides himself on an unapologetic style he learned from his father Fred Trump, a New York City housing developer, and Roy Cohn, a combative lawyer who served as an aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
.. The president was about to revert to his initial, more defiant stance. As Mr. Trump approached the microphone in the lobby of Trump Tower on Tuesday, aides winced at the prospect of an unmediated president. With good reason.
.. the hiring of Mr. Kelly, who was to impose discipline on a chaotic West Wing.
.. He added that efforts by the president to equate the actions of the counter-protesters, however violent they may have been, with the neo-Nazis and the driver of the car that murdered a protester were “unacceptable.”
“There’s no moral equivalence,” Mr. Cantor said.
Trump White House Continues Lawyering up as Russia Investigation Unfolds
Is Marc Kasowitz not enough anymore?
.. Cobb is “intended to be
- traffic cop,
- enforcer of discipline, and
- public spokesman” for the investigation,
according to Bloomberg News, working with Kasowitz and outside lawyers and leaving the rest of the White House counsel to focus on other things. (In the Trump administration, there are always other things).
.. Meanwhile, Jared Kushner is also in the midst of a legal shakeup, with the Times reporting that his attorney Jamie Gorelick will step away from advising him on anything related to Russia, though she’ll continue to advise him on other issues. With Kushner under fire for his own meetings with Russia, that leaves plenty for Gorelick’s successor, Abbe D. Lowell, to take on.
John Kelly cannot make Trump effective
First, this administration has zero legislative accomplishments and seems unable to negotiate with members of its own party. Kelly, who has been openly scornful of Congress, is unlikely to help in that regard.
.. (“If lawmakers do not like the laws they’ve passed and we are charged to enforce, then they should have the courage and skill to change the laws,’’ he said about congressional critics of immigration enforcement. “Otherwise they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.’’)
.. as the administration faces deadlines for the debt ceiling and the budget. Ironically, Trump needs help to close deals, and Kelly doesn’t have those skills.
.. Second, the president refuses to learn in office or master any level of detail. He therefore is far less influential in pressing lawmakers to pass his initiatives. Without understanding individual lawmakers’ objections, his ability to persuade and cajole them is limited to repeating empty talking points. The same problem that afflicted him in the health-care debate will be evident no matter what the topic.
.. it seems no one — not even Trump’s relatives and lawyers — can prevent him from digging himself a deeper hole.
.. Fourth, Kelly is more likely to accentuate Trump’s alienation from Republicans. Already strained because of health reform, the president’s serial outbursts and the Russia scandal, the relationship between Congress and Trump seems more like that between a president and the majority of the other party. In point of fact, Trump’s never really been a Republican
.. Kelly has no particular ideological leanings, no ties to the conservative movement and no experience in domestic policy. That leaves Trump even less tethered to his party than he was at the onset of his term.
.. Fifth, Trump refuses to be disciplined. He rejects the overwhelming sentiment among voters that Twitter is a dangerous distraction. Trump doesn’t agree. He tweeted againTuesday: “Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out!” Without a disciplined boss, the administration and Congress will be tied up in whatever controversy of the day Trump creates. Trump remains the obstacle that’s impossible to overcome. As long as he is there, effective leadership will be a fantasy.