President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Gen. James Mattis, a former Centcom commander, as his new Secretary of Defense, a move which had been spoken of a few times in the past few weeks, as the new president-elect continues to nail down his cabinet choices.
Gen. Mattis had a history of controversial remarks, and in 2013 decclared that he has a “rather dim view of Iranians,” insisting that the US should not engage in diplomacy with them and that the goal of American policy was to “bring Iran to its knees.”
Mattis also has garnered some opposition from Israeli officials, as in 2013 he warned that the Israeli occupation and settlement expansion was “unsustainable,” and that he thought it incompatible with Israel’s insistence of remaining a Jewish and democratic state, saying it would either end the Jewish majority or turn Israel into an apartheid state.
Even beyond hearings that will doubtless pour over his history of statements with a fine tooth comb, Gen. Mattis faces another obstacle in that a 1947 law has expressed the sentiment that no military commanders should be appointed to the defense secretary post unless they have been off active duty for a decade. The 10-year limit was reduced to seven in 2008, but either way Mattis is just over three years removed from Centcom.
The purpose of this law was to ensure that the US retained civilian control of the military, and while it’s not clear how seriously a 2017 Congress will view that risk, Trump’s appointment of very recent military commanders in high-ranking security positions is likely to raise a few eyebrows, and will doubtless force a debate.
On the positive side, Mattis was recently credited as having talked Trump out of his pledge to bring back torture of detainees, arguing that the tactic was ineffective, and that in his experience it was better to try to establish a rapport with prisoners to get information out of them.
With Mattis at the Pentagon and Pompeo at CIA, we can expect more wars of aggression and an even more disastrous foreign policy.
Will require an act of Congress for it to happen so realistically it will not he will not get ratification by the Senate, because it would be against the law!
Let’s hope!
I should point out that torture was/is also against the law. Just sayin’…
Ooh, ooh, its against the LAW (clutches pearls).
I’m so old I remember when assassinating American citizens and massively spying on them without a warrant was against the law, but thanks to Barry O, it’s full speed ahead.
If I know that Max Boot likes the man is there anything else I need to know?
https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/804459783524941825
Trump attacked Jeb by calling the Iraq war disastrous for America and Iraq and now he appoints one of the guys who ran that war ? … interesting. In fact aren’t all his picks unrepentant Iraq war supporters so far ?
baiting these guys into more disasterous interventions shouldn’t be too difficult for the islamists, i wouldn’t have thought ?
Salient portions of the text of Gen. Matthis’ 2013 interview with Wolf Blitzer can be found on “Informed Comment”. Most of these statements were about the Arab-Israeli conflict. He stated that Israel’s policy of “apartheid”-yes, he used that word-caused him big and daily problem as CENTCOM commander. He was very clearly not in the camp of AIPAC-ers.
He was against involvement in Syria. He thought that military actions to resolve problems about Iran’s nuclear program was not a good policy.
in that interview he says that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, he doesn’t care what Iranians says (or the all of the US’s own intel agencies apparently) they’re definitely on the path to nukes because they’re enriching uranium to a % that is over and above what is needed for nuclear power. He says Iran could have a nuke within a year if they choose (this interview was in 2013) so he at least thinks Iran is taking it to a point where break out would be possible.
he sounds pretty hawkish on iran, i’d say the odds of an attack on Iran are pretty high if he gets confirmed.
No one has yet been able to explain (to me, anyway) why it’s wrong for other countries to have nuclear weapons, but perfectly acceptable for the US.
I’m still waiting for an answer…
This guy says we’ve been at war for 5,000 years. Let me guess, he’s not big on evolution. Just what we need.
A 33-year hatred of Iran. Batten down the hatches, kids.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/james-mattis-iran-secretary-of-defense-214500