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.

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.

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.

Did you take a look at who wrote the article about Danny Sjursen? It says it was written by Eugene V. Debs. Eugene Victor Debs died in 1926, so he couldn't have written that article. It could possibly be written by his great great grandson. At any rate, the original Eugene V. Debs was an avowed socialist, so most likely his future generations were not far from socialism.

Here's a little information about Eugene V. Debs:

Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his p**********l candidacies as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.

As far as your Bing search URL, the only thing disparaging about Danny Sjursen is the Debs article.