Super Neocon Max Boot On the Likely Trump Secretary Of Defense

General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2016

This is your man if you are bloodthirsty and planning on going to war.

Max Boot writes:

And then there is Marine General James Mattis—nicknamed “Mad Dog” Mattis and the “Warrior Monk” for his ferocity toward the enemy and his single-minded dedication to the military arts. Mattis is a lifelong bachelor who has a reputation, notwithstanding his lack of any advanced degree, as one of the best-read students of military history and strategy in the entire armed forces. During the course of his career, he accumulated a library of some 7,000 volumes that he lugged from post to post.

Mattis first gained public attention as the one-star commander of a Marine task force that entered Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 to help Special Operations Forces mop up the remnants of the Taliban. His ability to push his Marines far inland, to the maximum extent of their helicopter range, was impressive. Even more impressive was his ability, as a two-star general, to lead the First Marine Division from Kuwait to Baghdad in a matter of weeks in the spring of 2003. So determined was Mattis to maintain this rate of advance that he fired a colonel whose regiment had been slowed by irregular attacks in the town of Nasiriya. The Marines’ assault helped make mincemeat out of Saddam Hussein’s defenses and allowed the American forces to reach Baghdad faster and with fewer losses than anticipated.

As soon as Saddam fell, Mattis moved from conventional combat to conducting counterinsurgency and stabilization operations in southern Iraq with a minimum of firepower. “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,” he told his men, and he warned Iraqis that the Marines would be “no better friend, no worse enemy.”...

Mattis, indeed, developed a Patton-like reputation for outspokenness with comments such as the one he made at a San Diego conference in 2005: “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway, so it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

   -RW