October 13, 2019

There are few people with the credibility and gravitas who could give us an up-close-and-personal warning of the dangers of Donald Trump and his personally transactional foreign policy. Gen. James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense for Trump, was one of those.

But no more.

Like everything else that Donald Trump touches, James Mattis has allowed any perception of integrity or patriotism turn to dust in his cowardly refusal to say what we all know: Donald Trump is endangering the world with his ill-conceived and impulsive policies in Turkey.

That Mattis hides his cowardice and lack of concern for American troops in an arbitrary notion of military generals staying apolitical is all that more egregious. "This would be the worst time, I think, for military people to step out like that. But also, the Constitution, I think, is a very hearty document. I've got a love affair with the U.S. Constitution ... We all need it today."

Love affair with the US Constitution? Yeah, right.

Let's start with Mattis actually being a CIVILIAN. He made a point of that when he was nominated for Secretary of Defense and needed a waiver because it is a...wait for it...political appointment and we have a policy that military members must wait seven years before accepting political appointments. He was a private citizen and proud veteran then, he assured us.

But now he's military? Come on.

But let's not forget why Mattis was even booked on a Sunday show today: he's promoting his new book, Call Sign Chaos, in which he CRITICIZES PRESIDENT OBAMA.

No administration catches more flak in this book than that headed by Obama. In a chapter titled "Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory," Mattis describes a losing battle as head of the U.S. Central Command (appointed by Obama in 2010) to keep a contingent of 18,000 troops in Iraq. "Beginning with President Bush and continuing through the Obama administration, the White House was set on a total troop withdrawal, for political reasons," he writes. "The National Security staff put no stock in our forecast that if we pulled out, the enemy would resurrect."

What a selective sense of duty and ethics Mattis has.

It's quite clear, like everything else in the Trump administration, that it has nothing to do with what's best for the country.

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