As the last “adult” left in the room, Secretary of Defense James Mattis (he still is because he’ll be there until Feb. 28, a key point) has shocked knowledgeable Americans and people in other countries worldwide by resigning his post — though probably surprised no one. It might be more surprising he stuck it out so long through insults to himself and military such as the border mission.
By the timing, Trump’s completely-consultless—except probably from Putin with Erdogan acting as reminder—decision to withdraw from Syria appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for Mattis. It’s certainly plausible, as the withdrawal flies in the face of the foreign policy principles Mattis adheres to, which he spelled out eloquently in his letter of resignation.
But I think there’s possibly more to it than that, both in substance and timing.
Let us take as a given that Mattis is a very intelligent man. He worked his way up through the ranks, is a voracious reader, and took an academic position after having retired from active service. As a general, he is a strategist.
How he got the position in the first place, I really don’t know, because he never was a toady, and that seemed to be a job requirement. Remember that first televised cabinet meeting cum suckfest, where everyone around the table took turns verbally fellating Trump, thanking God that they were serving him and so forth, in June 2017? One guy did not: James Mattis, giving his encomiums to American troops instead.
Why did he take the job? My guess was to be one of the adults in the room, something that he would have known was necessary on election night. The Atlantic has it that Mattis resigned because he had the realization Trump would never change. Nonsense; you think he didn’t read The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, or other material on Trump’s mental illness that came out even earlier, which included the futile prognosis? Or already knew the personality type? Part of generalship is reconnaissance.
No, I think Mattis has enough life and organizational experience, not to mention tip-offs from the Intelligence Community, to know that Trump would never listen to him unless he (Mattis) could impress and intimidate with superior intellect and the gravitas of his combat career, and so that’s what he did. I think Mattis also knew that when push came to shove, Trump would listen to Putin’s orders over any American advice, because they were orders from his mob boss. My feeling is that Putin has been pushing for the withdrawal for a while, and Trump hesitating due to pressure from Mattis and others, but Putin can smell Trump’s downfall coming and so twisted his arm harder recently. Notice the relaxation of sanctions on Oleg Deripaska came at the same time. Putin is grabbing the last of the goodies while they’re available.
Now consider the miserable fate of an adult in the room in Trump’s admin. You get more and more shit (or, to use the more genteel Pelosi term, tinkle) landing on you all the time, every day. You want to flee screaming—but the nation and world need you there. You want to tear Trump a new one with your truth to end his bullshit—but if you do that he’ll fire you, and the nation and world need you there. You want to believe resigning dramatically would bring him to his senses, but you know it won’t… and the nation and world need you there. I’m sure John Kelly thought he could keep his cool through any madness that Trump spewed, but he couldn’t, and hence the insider reports of his participation in White House shouting matches.
Mattis alone managed it. He kept quiet publicly. He said “Sir yes sir” like a good Marine to all manner of pr*sidential orders he must have thought were insane, from the trans ban to the border “mission”. All through I’ve been thinking, ‘he’s picking his battles so as to stay there.’ One clue we have as to how he managed it is his other, lesser-known nickname: “Warrior Monk”.
However, Mattis must also have acted on the general’s imperative and instinct to play the game as many moves ahead as foreseeable. He must have expected that, sooner or later, Trump would order something entirely contrary to the interests of the US and world democracy, because Putin would require it and nothing in Trump’s own mentality would oppose it. (Note the mention of democracy versus authoritarianism in the resignation letter.) Of course Mattis watched the progress of the investigations, especially Mueller’s; of course he had his ear to the ground on polling, media opinions, and lawmakers’ public utterances, votes and private opinions.
And I think his game was this: control his emotions in a zen-like fashion, hang in, and keep Trump from pulling the troops out of Syria until he was clearly in too much legal jeopardy for his presidency to survive, and Putin would want to grab those goodies, last chance. Then, when it happened, resign in such a way as to aid in Trump’s demise.
He actually signaled it beforehand. Last week I wrote a diary, Whoa! Defense Secretary Jim Mattis lets the world know who's in charge, about him freely criticizing Putin for interfering in the presidential and midterms—something Mattis had never done before. I think I somewhat misread it, thinking Mattis was doing this because his position was secure due to Trump’s effective loss of power. What it really meant, I now think, was something more subtle than that: he felt free to speak his truth because he anticipated the time to resign was coming.
As more than one diarist has pointed out, the resignation letter, while remaining impeccably polite and non-judgmental, is an absolute burn on Trump’s foreign policy malfeasance. But as Jen Hayden pointed out in her diary, he didn’t just hand it to Trump. He handed it to 50 other people in the Pentagon, and made it public—another unprecedented move. This was for maximum impact.
Consider also the revelation from John Wolfsthal that Mattis has secretly worked to keep the tiny orange digits from having real access to the Button, diaried by durrati. I didn’t buy it at first, based on the first two Wolfsthal tweets, which accused Mattis of breaking the law; the ones in the diary update revealed a more subtle tactic, of making sure any information that might provoke consideration of nuclear action would get to Mattis before it got to Trump. (My feeling is that there probably actually were two tactics to keep the world safe from Trump’s whims, a double-safe system—or maybe even more—but Wolfsthal concentrated just on the less illegal one in his tweets for obvious reasons.) Why did this come out now? To show American voters and the world that it was necessary and Trump must be removed, and pressure Republican senators to consider impeachment. Yes, it’s something of a scare tactic, but the remedy is within easy reach. Note what Wolfsthal tweeted:
[Mattis’s] departure means existing and undemocratic check is going too. Senate members who tollerated [sic] Trump may be less willing now.
Not too subtle a hint.
I think Mattis’s resignation, rendered more impactful by his bipartisan reputation for military wisdom and non-partisanship, has signal-boosted the protests against the Syrian withdrawal. Lindsay Graham escaped his apparent Trump pod-person phase to go ballistic. Fox and Friends made the stunning accusation that Trump “refounded ISIS” (as diaried by NewsCorpse). As ursulafaw diaried, Rick Wilson chimed in with some very thoughtfully damning analysis on Mattis’s leave-taking. And #TrumpResign has been trending on Twitter all day.
As I wrote in that other diary, again, Mattis is not acting alone but in concert with everyone who is working toward saving American democracy, including the Democratic Party and American voters who made their wills very clear in the mid-terms. Anyone who might have thought he was power-mongering in an anti-democratic way can let that go; you don’t keep power by leaving your powerful position.
However leaving it in this way and at this time was the most powerful thing he could do towards removing Trump and ending his chaos, destruction and compromising of democracy at home and worldwide.
Here’s the kicker: he doesn’t actually leave until February 28. He’s still an adult in the room for two more months, whatever crazy crap Trump tweets or blathers about him, having provided a pretext no one can argue with (sufficient notice for a proper confirmation process for his successor).
My guess is that Mattis is anticipating that by Feb. 28, Trump will be gone, or at least rendered so powerless that he can’t do much more damage, and adults in the room are no longer needed, at least not so desperately. I hope he is right. His move is a gamble, as generals sometimes make. But he has access to far more information than I do.
However much I disagree with his hawkish stances at other times, I think history will appreciate what James Mattis did here.
Well-played, General.
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