Musings on Mad-Dog Mattis and Military Necessity
When President-elect Donald Trump sent his talent scouts to the attack-dog kennel run by defense industry giant General Dynamics, in order to recruit former Marine General James Mad Dog Mattis to be secretary of defense, cries of apprehension were drowned out by smug one-percent reassurances.
Those who know whats best for the country insisted: NOT TO WORRY; actually Mattis is a Renaissance Man. Yes, he thinks, and says, its fun to shoot people. But after taking a hot shower in the evening, he reads Greek epic poetry.
Syria
Last Sunday, Mattis told CBS its gonna be more fun again. At a time when civilian casualties are extremely high in Syria, thus spake James Renaissance Man Mattis to CBSs Face the Nation:
We have already shifted from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them.
Mattis was asked what about civilian casualties.
Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation, he replied, adding that the U.S. military does everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity.
This brings to mind the Feb. 7, 2002 Executive Order signed by President George W. Bush authorizing another kind of war crime torture. That Memorandum concluded with identical reassurance in this case, that detainees would be treated humanely, and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.
Afghanistan
Worse still (if there can be a worse still), Mattis reportedly is weighing how many thousands more troops from the US poverty draft to send to hold your breath AFGHANISTAN!
Instead of reading Homer and reflecting on the Trojan War 33 centuries ago, Mattis ought to fast forward and read more modern history on Afghanistan. He might fast forward to just 27 centuries ago, when Alexander the Great made, but did not follow through on, an abortive attempt to conquer Afghanistan. Abortive is the key word here. He faced stiff resistance from the locals, who for some reason did not like being invaded and lacked the respect due the sole superpower the world of those times.
Alexander was smart enough to realize that he had bit off more than he could chew. He brought his army back west, before many more of them got killed, to where he knew what he was doing. On that count alone he deserves the moniker Great. Unlike those who have tried to conquer Afghanistan in the 22 centuries that followed, he decided the game was not worth the candle.
This adage is attributed to Alexander: There is nothing impossible to him who will try. The corollary, of course, is that some things DO happen to be well nigh impossible and, as such, not worth the cost of trying for some dimly perceived, nonessential gain.
Fools Walk In
In the centuries that followed, many powerful statesmen powerful, but not so Great in terms of knowing when to avoid trying the impossible have attempted to subdue those incorrigible tribes in Afghanistan. The long, sad, fools list includes: Arabs, Mongolians, Persians, Indians, British, Russians and now Americans.
Lets hope Renaissance Man Mattis will leave Homer and the Trojan War behind and read up more recent history. A good way to start would be to get a hold of Barbara Tuchmans classic The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.
The bomb blast last night in Kabul that killed more than 80 and wounded 300 will probably tempt Mattis and his delusional boss to lash out militarily. That could include the next surge in the fools errand into Afghanistan. It would be a piece of what Mattiss predecessors browbeat the benighted Barack Obama into doing as soon as he came into office, playing on his campaign rhetoric that Afghanistan was some kind of good war, in contrast to the one in Iraq.
Since greeting WBTE (Wet-Behind-The-Ears) Barack Obama in March 2009 with a piece titled Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President, I have tried to keep at it. The effort runs no risk of getting boring, given the high stakes involved. A lot of people are dying just a small portion of whom are the American heroes celebrated over the weekend as the fallen; the lost. (They were neither lost nor fallen; they were pushed to death many of them with the help of a supremely unjust poverty draft).
But the vast majority of dead and injured are non-American others mostly civilians a fact of death, which Mad Dog Mattis rationalizes as a fact of life
consistent with military necessity.
Maybe someone can give him a history book about Alexander the Great and how it was not such a bad idea to chicken out and withdraw from Afghanistan. He could be told that history would be happy to call him Mad Dog The Great, should that appeal to him. He desperately needs to educate himself on the indomitable folks in that poor country (and their equally determined supporters across the border in Pakistan). Please, someone suggest to Mattis that it would be Renaissance-Man-like to follow Alexanders example and avoid confronting the impossible even aside from the human and other costs when it is a fact of life that neither the strategic stakes nor military necessity warrant it.
It would be nice, too, if one of his aides could replace Homer with one or two of the following articles under his pillow on the chance he can be brought to realize that its not fun just dumb to go around shooting people. And that that goes in spades for Afghanistan.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from his website.