James Mattis, the former Defense secretary who knows first-hand that Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our national security, refuses to do his moral and constitutional duty. At this critical crossroads for America, when we need him to publicly speak the truth, he’s AWOL.
Calling out Trump for the unprecedented havoc he’s wreaking at home and abroad is the highest form of patriotism. Mattis knows darn well that Trump’s narcissistic ignorance is making America less safe – witness Trump’s current betrayal of an anti-terrorist ally, and the resulting threat of a reconstituted ISIS – but the ex-Pentagon chief prefers to flack his new book about honor and leadership without sharing insights that would likely prove invaluable during this impeachment autumn.
He’s been playing this game for a few months now – he insists that “military people” traditionally stay silent about a current president – but there’s a fundamental flaw in his argument: He’s not a military person anymore. He retired from the military five years ago, and he took the Defense job – a political appointment – as a civilian. All of which undercuts the explanation he gave yesterday, during a guest gig on Meet the Press, when he tried to explain his reticence about Trump: “There’s a longstanding tradition, why you do not want the military to be engaged in politics.”
He appeared to forget that he’s been out of the military since 2014. He also appeared to forget that Dwight Eisenhower was a military retiree when he ran for president as a Republican in 1952 and publicly questioned the Democratic Truman administration’s war policies in Korea – and that another military retiree, Wesley Clark, ran for the president as a Democrat in 2004 and publicly criticized George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
Host Chuck Todd didn’t confront Mattis with those unassailable facts, but he did try to coax the guy to open up. Todd quoted an American soldier, serving on the front lines in Syria, who said he was “ashamed” that Trump had betrayed our allies, the Kurds, in the fight against ISIS. Todd asked Mattis: “Are you concerned about troop morale?”
But Mattis eschewed specificity and chose opacity: “We’re always concerned about troop morale. We have an all-volunteer force. What we have to remember is every one of these soldiers, sailors, airmen, coast guardsmen, marines, they have voluntarily stepped forward and looked past all the hot political rhetoric and rallied to the flag…They’ve signed a blank check, payable to the American people with their lives, to defend this experiment that you and I call America. And so their, their views on, on matters of policy are important to us.”
Todd tried again, referencing Trump’s constant tilt toward Russia, defying the views of many in his own administration: “Are you concerned that, while the country speaks with one voice on a governmental level when it comes to Russia, that the political leader is not?”
Mattis immediately signaled a retreat: “Yeah, I won’t, I won’t make political assessments right now. The military’s job is to protect this experiment, this America. And the American people will decide who the political leaders will be. I have a lot of faith the American people will be represented by the right political leaders.”
Moments later, after refusing to say whether Trump’s cut-and-run decision in Syria (and the resulting escape, from Kurdish custody, of 700 ISIS supporters) is making America safer – Mattis replied, “That’s a complex question” – he again praised the electorate’s wisdom:
“Well, Chuck, I have a lot of faith in the American people. They know how to vote. They don’t need military generals telling them that they think this political assessment is the one they should go with…This would be the worst time, I think, for military people to step out like that.”
I repeat: Mattis is no longer a military general or a military person. He was in the room with Trump for nearly two years in a civilian capacity. And if Trump is not impeached and removed, “the American people” would surely be better informed about “how to vote” if Mattis were to share his assessment of Trump’s fitness for a second term. (Norm Ornstein, the veteran nonpartisan Washington analyst, is blunter than I am. Yesterday, on Twitter, he rebuked Mattis’ “moral cowardice hiding behind a rigid view of military chain of command,” and said that Mattis needs to use his “moral authority to speak out against traitorous presidential conduct.”)
By the way, did you catch the caveat in one of Mattis’ remarks yesterday? He said: “I won’t make political assessments right now.” That dovetails with a remark he made during a recent interview, when he said that his period of silence is “not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.” In other words, he’s fully prepared to breach his I’m-a-Military-Man silence at some future time – which proves that his current rationale is bogus, and that he knows it.
He said yesterday, “I’ve got a love affair with the U.S. Constitution.” Fine. The opportune time to defend it is now.