James Mattis joined the Marine Corps in, just as I was released from active duty upon returning from Viet Nam. He is one of the most revered USMC leaders in its history. I have always admired/respected the man. I dare to say he has also kept his oath. His words below spoke of the real threat to our constitutional democratic republic, then and now.

On June 4th, 2020, President Donald Trump's first secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, said in a remarkable 650-word statement that the President was actively trying to divide the country and urged Americans to unite without him. (Eighty-one million of us did in November, 2020)

Mattis had avoided directly criticizing Trump since his leaving in December 2018, but that changed after the administration used strong-arm tactics and dispatched authorities in r**t gear to clear peaceful protesters in front of the White House this week so Trump could hold a photo op. Mattis, once the loyal general, unloaded on Trump and his threat to use the military to patrol US streets, which Mattis said would create a dangerous tension between the nation's citizens and the troops who are meant to protect them.

Below is a close look at Mattis's carefully chosen words along with comments from two other former top generals who have all condemned Trump in recent days.

I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court.

This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.

Mattis opens his statement acknowledging that equal justice is a key promise of this country, an immediate contrast to Trump, who has sought to portray protesters as villains.

We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

While Trump has tried to paint the protesters as criminals, Mattis immediately establishes that most of the protesters are making a valid and peaceful point about the failings of our country.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Every government employee except the President takes this oath, which is in US law. It reads: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The photo op was bizarre indeed. Trump, alongside his Defense Secretary Mark Esper, walked through Lafayette Square after it was cleared by police of peaceful protesters to hold a massive Bible aloft in front of a church.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a "battlespace" that our uniformed military is called upon to "dominate."

This is a direct rebuke of Esper, who used that term - "battlespace" - to refer to cities. He later argued it is part of the military lexicon.

At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
The military has only been used in US streets very rarely, most recently in Los Angeles in 1992. Trump can deploy the military to Washington, because it is a federal city and not party of a state. During the Civil Rights era, presidents used the I**********n Act, an 1807 law, and deployed the military over the objections of governors. But Mattis argues here that the divide between civilian law enforcement and the military is part of the bedrock of US society.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that "America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat."

We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

The difference between a posture of unity and Trump's, which was a demand that governors "dominate" protesters, cannot be overstated.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that "The N**i slogan for destroying us...was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.'" We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.

Note that Mattis invokes the N**i "divide and conquer" slogan moments before saying Trump is seeking to the divide the US.

We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children. We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another.

The structure of US society is stronger than Trump, Mattis suggests. But clearly Trump tests it.

The p******c has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country.

We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.

Mattis accuses his former boss of abusing power, the ultimate t***sgression for a President, whose power rests with the American e*****rate.

At the same time, we must remember Lincoln's "better angels," and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in t***h, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Lincoln closed his first inaugural address, just before the breakout of the Civil War, with an entreaty to the South not to secede.

A longer excerpt of the speech is worth reading: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." But the Civil War did come and the first shots were fired a month after Lincoln delivered this speech. Years later, as the war was closing, after hundreds of thousands of Americans had died, Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, which was focused on healing and forgiveness "with malice toward none and charity for all."

https://www.bing.com/search?q=jamesmattis&cvid=291d8e9009a14a23ad84f8e371198ac2&aqs=edge..69i57.4979j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=HCTS

Kyle Cheney, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Josh Gerstein

Thu, January 13, 2022, 1:04 PM

The Justice Department has leveled its most serious charges yet stemming from the J*** 6 Capitol r**t, accusing the national leader of the far-right O**h K****rs m*****a and 10 others of s*******s conspiracy by plotting to use force to block the peaceful t***sfer of p**********l power a year ago.

Among those charged for the first time in one new grand jury indictment is Stewart Rhodes, a disbarred attorney alleged to have coordinated the attack on the Capitol who has long been of significant interest to federal prosecutors probing the i**********n by Donald Trump supporters.

Rhodes was arrested in Texas Thursday morning, the Justice Department said. The 48-page indictment begins with a description of a "plot to oppose by force the 2020 lawful t***sfer of p**********l power."

"The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful t***sfer of p**********l power by force, by preventing, hindering or delaying by force the execution of the laws governing the t******r of p***r, including the Twelfth and Twentieth Amendments to the Constitution," the indictment reads. Among the goals of the conspiracy, prosecutors say, was "breaching and attempting to take control of the Capitol."

Prosecutors have spent months building a case against Rhodes, describing with great detail his movements even as they delayed charging him alongside 19 other O**h K****rs previously indicted for breaching the Capitol.

Rhodes was present outside the Capitol on J*** 6, 2021, and there has been no public indication he entered the building. As the violent assault was underway, Rhodes was captured on video assembling his allies at a rally point outside the Capitol complex. Many of those who can be seen conversing with Rhodes were charged early last year as part of a sweeping conspiracy to halt Congress’ certification of the 2020 e******n.

The decision to level s*******s conspiracy charges is the most significant public step the Justice Department has taken to date in its i**********n probe. Just six days after the r**t, the top prosecutor handling the investigation said such charges were being considered.

“We are looking at significant felony cases tied to s******n and conspiracy,” then-acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said at a televised news conference.

However, prosecutors held off for almost exactly a year on following through on Sherwin’s words. Until a set of new indictments were handed down by a grand jury in Washington Wednesday, the highest-level charges facing defendants were obstruction and police assault.

The nature of the charges themselves cast the J*** 6 in a far more menacing light. S*******s conspiracy charges are extremely rare. The most recent before the new charges facing the O**h K****rs came in 2010 against nine m*****a members who plotted a violent assault on federal authorities.

Allies of former President Donald Trump, inside and outside of Congress, have pointed to the absence of s******n charges as evidence the Capitol r**t is overhyped while attempting to downplay the violence of the attack.

Among the key elements of the plot, prosecutors say, was the establishment of a “quick reaction force“ — a stockpile of firearms and other weaponry — outside of Washington D.C. that could be called in to escalate the attack.

Jonathon Moseley, an attorney who was representing Rhodes in negotiations with the J*** 6 select committee, said he was on the phone with Rhodes discussing his strategy for the panel when the FBI arrived at Rhodes’ home and told him to come outside. Moseley said Rhodes conferenced him in on a phone call with the FBI special agent in charge.

“They called him on the phone and they asked him to come out and put his hands up to be arrested. And so obviously the first order of business with that is to make sure there’s no misunderstanding, no problem with that,” Moseley said. “They wanted to know who else was in the house.”

Moseley said he’s working to get Rhodes a criminal defense attorney who can represent him at a bail hearing. The House's J*** 6 select committee had subpoenaed Rhodes as part of its investigation into the attack. Moseley has previously said Rhodes was likely to plead the Fifth to the panel. A spokesperson for the select committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Defense attorneys for already charged O**h K****rs have complained for months that the numerous anonymous references to Rhodes as an uncharged “Person One” in succeeding indictments over the r**t had unduly complicated the case as trials loomed. Those attorneys also have warned that belatedly charging could roil plans for the trials.

A grand jury considering i**********n-related indictments met Wednesday, a prosecutor said in a separate hearing earlier Thursday.

Prosecutors often laid out in painstaking detail the communications Rhodes had with other members of the charged conspiracy, detailing the length of his phone calls and the content of private messages with other group members. He was typically referred to only as “Person One” in the charging documents.

Rhodes was a vocal agitator in support of Trump’s effort to overturn the e******n in 2020. He repeatedly and publicly warned of violence if Biden’s e******n were affirmed. He rallied allies in the O**h K****rs to descend on Washington and encouraged Trump to invoke the I**********n Act in an attempt to prevent Congress from sealing President Joe Biden's victory.

On J*** 6, 2021, his group stored weapons at a Comfort Inn in Virginia near the Capitol as part of their “quick reaction force,” federal prosecutors have alleged.

Among the men charged with s*******s conspiracy are at least two photographed with Trump ally Roger Stone on Jan. 5, 2021 — Roberto Minuta and Joshua James. Stone, who has been subpoenaed by the J*** 6 select committee, has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has disavowed any knowledge of the O**h K****rs’ intent to go to the Capitol.

Stone asserted his Fifth Amendment rights to decline to provide testimony to the select committee.

James Mattis joined the Marine Corps in, just as I was released from active duty upon returning from Viet Nam. He is one of the most revered USMC leaders in its history. I have always admired/respected the man. I dare to say he has also kept his oath. His words below spoke of the real threat to our constitutional democratic republic, then and now.

On June 4th, 2020, President Donald Trump's first secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, said in a remarkable 650-word statement that the President was actively trying to divide the country and urged Americans to unite without him. (Eighty-one million of us did in November, 2020)

Mattis had avoided directly criticizing Trump since his leaving in December 2018, but that changed after the administration used strong-arm tactics and dispatched authorities in r**t gear to clear peaceful protesters in front of the White House this week so Trump could hold a photo op. Mattis, once the loyal general, unloaded on Trump and his threat to use the military to patrol US streets, which Mattis said would create a dangerous tension between the nation's citizens and the troops who are meant to protect them.

Below is a close look at Mattis's carefully chosen words along with comments from two other former top generals who have all condemned Trump in recent days.

I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court.

This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.

Mattis opens his statement acknowledging that equal justice is a key promise of this country, an immediate contrast to Trump, who has sought to portray protesters as villains.

We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

While Trump has tried to paint the protesters as criminals, Mattis immediately establishes that most of the protesters are making a valid and peaceful point about the failings of our country.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Every government employee except the President takes this oath, which is in US law. It reads: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The photo op was bizarre indeed. Trump, alongside his Defense Secretary Mark Esper, walked through Lafayette Square after it was cleared by police of peaceful protesters to hold a massive Bible aloft in front of a church.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a "battlespace" that our uniformed military is called upon to "dominate."

This is a direct rebuke of Esper, who used that term - "battlespace" - to refer to cities. He later argued it is part of the military lexicon.

At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
The military has only been used in US streets very rarely, most recently in Los Angeles in 1992. Trump can deploy the military to Washington, because it is a federal city and not party of a state. During the Civil Rights era, presidents used the I**********n Act, an 1807 law, and deployed the military over the objections of governors. But Mattis argues here that the divide between civilian law enforcement and the military is part of the bedrock of US society.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that "America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat."

We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

The difference between a posture of unity and Trump's, which was a demand that governors "dominate" protesters, cannot be overstated.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that "The N**i slogan for destroying us...was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.'" We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.

Note that Mattis invokes the N**i "divide and conquer" slogan moments before saying Trump is seeking to the divide the US.

We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children. We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another.

The structure of US society is stronger than Trump, Mattis suggests. But clearly Trump tests it.

The p******c has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country.

We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.

Mattis accuses his former boss of abusing power, the ultimate t***sgression for a President, whose power rests with the American e*****rate.

At the same time, we must remember Lincoln's "better angels," and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in t***h, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Lincoln closed his first inaugural address, just before the breakout of the Civil War, with an entreaty to the South not to secede.

A longer excerpt of the speech is worth reading: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." But the Civil War did come and the first shots were fired a month after Lincoln delivered this speech. Years later, as the war was closing, after hundreds of thousands of Americans had died, Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, which was focused on healing and forgiveness "with malice toward none and charity for all."

https://www.bing.com/search?q=jamesmattis&cvid=291d8e9009a14a23ad84f8e371198ac2&aqs=edge..69i57.4979j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=HCTS

A wealth of facts show that there are ample openings for non-citizens to illegally v**e and that roughly 16% of them v**ed in the 2008 and 2012 p**********l e******ns. If this was also the case in the 2020 battleground states where Biden currently has slim leads, the numbers of non-citizens in these states and their preference for Democrats may have netted Biden enough fraudulent v**es to tip the overall e******n winner from Trump to Biden.

Trump’s E******n Integrity Commission

A common argument used to dismiss facts about e******n f***d is that President Trump’s Advisory Commission on E******n Integrity failed to find widespread evidence of such malfeasance. This claim is a classic half-t***h because it neglects to reveal that the Commission existed for less than a year because its work was blocked by the refusal of states to turn over v**er data and a flurry of lawsuits.

In the words of California’s Secretary of State in 2017:

While the commission is allowed to request the personal data of California v**ers, they cannot compel me to provide it. Let me reassure California v**ers: I will not provide the Commission with any personal v**er data. …

Yesterday’s ruling is merely the first in a string of lawsuits challenging the Commission. Those lawsuits send a strong message—the Commission will face opposition at every step of the way from those who are fighting to protect our v****g rights, our privacy, and our democratic principles.

Contrary to the allegation that the Commission sought “personal v**er data,” it actually asked the states for “detailed, publicly available v**er roll data.” Given that Trump now has legal “standing,” or “a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy,” courts may force states to turn over the data that they previously withheld. This would allow the Trump campaign to cross check v**er rolls against other databases that contain information on citizenship status.

Without such cross checks—which certain states stridently opposed under the guise that the data is personal—claims that widespread v***r f***d doesn’t exist because the Commission didn’t find it are misleading and baseless.

https://www.justfactsdaily.com/quantifying-illegal-v**es-cast-by-non-citizens-in-the-battleground-states-of-the-2020-p**********l-e******n

James Mattis joined the Marine Corps in, just as I was released from active duty upon returning from Viet Nam. He is one of the most revered USMC leaders in its history. I have always admired/respected the man. I dare to say he has also kept his oath. His words below spoke of the real threat to our constitutional democratic republic, then and now.

On June 4th, 2020, President Donald Trump's first secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, said in a remarkable 650-word statement that the President was actively trying to divide the country and urged Americans to unite without him. (Eighty-one million of us did in November, 2020)

Mattis had avoided directly criticizing Trump since his leaving in December 2018, but that changed after the administration used strong-arm tactics and dispatched authorities in r**t gear to clear peaceful protesters in front of the White House this week so Trump could hold a photo op. Mattis, once the loyal general, unloaded on Trump and his threat to use the military to patrol US streets, which Mattis said would create a dangerous tension between the nation's citizens and the troops who are meant to protect them.

Below is a close look at Mattis's carefully chosen words along with comments from two other former top generals who have all condemned Trump in recent days.

I have watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words "Equal Justice Under Law" are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court.

This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind.

Mattis opens his statement acknowledging that equal justice is a key promise of this country, an immediate contrast to Trump, who has sought to portray protesters as villains.

We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

While Trump has tried to paint the protesters as criminals, Mattis immediately establishes that most of the protesters are making a valid and peaceful point about the failings of our country.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Every government employee except the President takes this oath, which is in US law. It reads: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The photo op was bizarre indeed. Trump, alongside his Defense Secretary Mark Esper, walked through Lafayette Square after it was cleared by police of peaceful protesters to hold a massive Bible aloft in front of a church.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a "battlespace" that our uniformed military is called upon to "dominate."

This is a direct rebuke of Esper, who used that term - "battlespace" - to refer to cities. He later argued it is part of the military lexicon.

At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
The military has only been used in US streets very rarely, most recently in Los Angeles in 1992. Trump can deploy the military to Washington, because it is a federal city and not party of a state. During the Civil Rights era, presidents used the I**********n Act, an 1807 law, and deployed the military over the objections of governors. But Mattis argues here that the divide between civilian law enforcement and the military is part of the bedrock of US society.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that "America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat."

We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

The difference between a posture of unity and Trump's, which was a demand that governors "dominate" protesters, cannot be overstated.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that "The N**i slogan for destroying us...was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.'" We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.

Note that Mattis invokes the N**i "divide and conquer" slogan moments before saying Trump is seeking to the divide the US.

We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children. We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another.

The structure of US society is stronger than Trump, Mattis suggests. But clearly Trump tests it.

The p******c has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country.

We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.

Mattis accuses his former boss of abusing power, the ultimate t***sgression for a President, whose power rests with the American e*****rate.

At the same time, we must remember Lincoln's "better angels," and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in t***h, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Lincoln closed his first inaugural address, just before the breakout of the Civil War, with an entreaty to the South not to secede.

A longer excerpt of the speech is worth reading: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." But the Civil War did come and the first shots were fired a month after Lincoln delivered this speech. Years later, as the war was closing, after hundreds of thousands of Americans had died, Lincoln gave his second inaugural address, which was focused on healing and forgiveness "with malice toward none and charity for all."

https://www.bing.com/search?q=jamesmattis&cvid=291d8e9009a14a23ad84f8e371198ac2&aqs=edge..69i57.4979j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=HCTS

The Madness of James Mattis

Maj. Danny Sjursen

Last week, in a well-received Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis delivered a critique of Donald Trump that was as hollow as it was self-righteous. Explaining his decision to resign from the administration, the retired Marine general known as “Mad Dog” eagerly declared himself “apolitical,” peppering his narrative with cheerful vignettes about his much beloved grunts. “We all know that we’re better than our current politics,” he observed solemnly. “Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment.”

Yet absent from this personal reflection, which has earned bipartisan adulation, was any kind of out-of-the-box thinking and, more disturbingly, anything resembling a mea culpa—either for his role in the Trump administration or his complicity in America’s failing forever wars in the greater Middle East. For a military man, much less a four-star general, this is a cardinal sin. What’s worse, no one in the mainstream media appears willing to challenge the worldview presented in his essay, concurrent interviews and forthcoming book.

This was disconcerting if unsurprising. In Trump’s America, reflexive hatred for the president has led many in the media to foolishly pin their political hopes on generals like Mattis, leaders of the only public institution the people still trust. Even purportedly liberal journalists like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who was once critical of U.S. militarism, have reversed course, defending engagements in Syria and Afghanistan seemingly because the president has expressed interest in winding them down. The fallacy that Mattis and other generals were the voice of reason in the Trump White House, the so-called “adults in the room,” has precluded any serious critique of their actual strategy and advice.

The wildly unpopular, if not forbidden-to-be-uttered, t***h is that Mattis, while an admittedly decorated Marine and a military strategist, was an abject failure. Despite being hailed as a “warrior monk,” he was and remains a conventional interventionist figure—prisoner to the tired old militarist ideas of the necessity for U.S. military forward deployment, counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, and the perpetual need to balance or “contain” Russia and China. His career-long defense of America’s post-9/11 engagements should be the first sentence of his obituary.

None of these egregious errors in judgment have derailed Mattis’ career, of course. Can-do attitudes and compulsive optimism form the bedrock of today’s military culture, if not American society at large. Indeed, it was the general’s all-too-familiar view of the “War on Terror” that likely endeared him to successive promotion boards. As he notes in his own op-ed, “Institutions get the behaviors they reward.”

But Mattis and his entire generation of military leadership ultimately did a great disservice to their subordinates and the American people once they reached four-star rank. When given an (often absurd) mission by administration officials—be they Bush neoconservatives or Obama liberals—these generals and admirals offered “how” rather than “if” responses. Cultishly eager to please, they failed to tell their frequently ill-informed superiors that perhaps a proposed conflict couldn’t be won, at least with the resources available or at an acceptable human cost. Instead, Mattis, David Petraeus and their ilk debated whether counter-terror, advise-and-assist, or counterinsurgency was the best method to achieve an ill-defined “victory.” They effectively substituted high-level tactics for strategy.

Thanks to Mattis and company, Trump’s purported desire to withdraw from fruitless Middle Eastern wars has been stifled, the result being business as usual for the military-industrial-complex and national security state. And why not? Since resigning his post, Mattis has burst through the “revolving door” of the arms industry, reclaiming his seat on the board of the fifth largest defense contractor, General Dynamics. Albert Einstein famously (and perhaps apocryphally) said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” He might just as easily have been describing the career of James Mattis, who has been proven wrong again and again and again, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria.

Perhaps the only thing more celebrated than Mattis’ ostensible intellectualism is his supposed integrity. Yet his record as defense secretary throws that into question as well. Lest we forget, the general only decided to resign when Trump dared suggest a modest troop withdrawal from an 18-year war in Afghanistan and a speedy end to a highly risky, and ill-defined, mission in Syria.

This man of principle apparently had no ethical or philosophical compunctions about his department’s support and complicity in the Saudi terror bombing and starvation campaign aimed at the people of Yemen. This ongoing war has k**led tens of thousands of civilians, starved at least 85,000 children to death, unleashed the world’s worst cholera epidemic, and generated millions of refugees. Mattis offered not one word of public criticism as his boss sold Saudi Arabia bombs that were all too often dropped on the heads of Yemeni civilians.

Even after revelations that Saudi intelligence agents had murdered and dismembered The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Mattis and Secretary of State Pompeo appeared before Congress to defend the Saudis and argue for continued U.S. support in its war on Yemen. That conflict alone should have prompted him to resign, but it did not.

Mattis, a supposed “warrior monk,” and cerebral strategist above the passions and viciousness of battle, also holds a tarnished legacy from his time commanding the siege and assault of Fallujah, Iraq, in late 2004. According to a well-documented report from the Center for Investigative Reporting, his Marines played fast and loose with their firepower, k*****g enough civilians to fill a soccer stadium. A year later, he reportedly used his status as a two-star general to “wipe away criminal charges” for Marines accused of massacring 24 Iraqi civilians in the village of Haditha.

His actions in Iraq earned Mattis the nickname “Mad Dog,” of which he is now reportedly embarrassed. The former defense secretary seems always to have been a disturbingly gleeful k**ler, and once famously said of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, that “Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.” These aren’t the words of a reluctant warrior, even if they do demonstrate surprising candor about the dark side of war rarely uttered in polite company. It sounds instead like the irresponsible comments of a senior general who was busy playing sergeant.

Mattis ends his op-ed with a brief tale about the proverbial boys in the trenches. During the (predictably failed) assault on Marjah, Afghanistan, in 2010, he recounts asking an exhausted, sweaty Marine how he was doing and receiving a gleeful reply of “Living the dream, sir!” In my experience as a soldier, this kind of quip is usually meant sarcastically, but no matter. The exchange energized Mattis, and no one in the corporate press dared examine the real essence of the story he imparted.

By refusing to question the Marjah operation, or Obama’s Afghan “surge” in general, Mattis betrayed the very ground-pounders by whom he was so inspired. A more honorable figure, a true adult in the room, would have asked what we were doing there in the first place.

Maj. Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan.