For in respect of policy, General Mattis has always struck us as crosswise with the president. This was foreshadowed before the 2016 election, when the general, at the time the former commander of CentCom, was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer at an Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. That’s the appearance where the Jar Head blamed our troubles in the Middle East on Israel.
After praising our "valiant" secretary of state, John F.
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, unsuccessful presidential candidate, and utterly failed Secretary of State...
, the general complained at Aspen: "I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Paleostinians."
So why the new president put General Mattis at the top of the Pentagon is a mystery. Mr. Trump, after all, had just won the presidency in a campaign focused against precisely the foreign policy of President Obama and Secretaries Kerry and
Perennial Presidential Campaigner Hillary Crooked HillaryClinton
... former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, Conqueror of Benghazi, Heroine of Tuzla, formerly described by her supporters as
the smartest woman in the world,usually described by the rest of us as The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away...
. Mr. Trump took to the voters their support for the Gay Paree climate accord and the Iran appeasement and hostility to the Jerusalem Embassy.
In winning the election, the President gained a mandate on every one of those issues (the Jerusalem embassy had been sought for 20 years by an almost unanimous Congress). None of the President’s promises could have been a surprise to General Mattis when he took the Pentagon job. Yet he groused about them constantly. It’s amazing to us that Mr. Trump didn’t dismiss General Mattis earlier.
This is a context in which the general’s letter of resignation is, to our ear, all too arch. The general writes that he has "strongly held" views on "treating allies with respect" and "being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors." He also writes that we must "advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values."
...Our own view is that having a "sort of" ‐ or even an actual ‐ Democrat in a Republican cabinet isn’t the worst thing. It could even be a virtue, particularly in foreign policy, where our differences are supposed to stop at the water’s edge. It requires, though, the figure from the out-of-power party to have a tough enough hide to be in the minority and to understand that our constitutional structure makes any president the adult in the room.