The general delivered his opinion on the current Commander in Chief:
“The President is no more than a well-meaning baboon. I went to the White House directly after tea, where I found “The Original Gorilla,” about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.”
This quote may sound familiar if you’ve been following the news. Its paraphrase is echoing somewhere on Twitter at this very moment. The current commentary will no doubt refer to our current president, Donald Trump — however, the quote was originally penned by George B. McClellan regarding Abraham Lincoln.
The fact that most people have never heard of George B. McClellan is evidence enough that he lost the debate over Lincoln’s intelligence and legacy, something we should keep in mind when we hear the latest assertions from today’s former generals.
One such general is former Marine General and Secretary of Defense, James Mattis.
Let me preface that I have nothing but respect for Mattis’ military record. As soon as Trump installed him as Secretary of Defense, he formulated a strategy to defeat ISIS and then did so in merely six months. Mattis leaned on his lifelong knowledge of what it takes to win a war. He was in his element. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
Like McClellan, Mattis in retirement has become an outspoken critic of the president and he openly questions his policy, tacitly encouraging other military men to do likewise. Mattis recently spoke to a liberal audience denouncing Trump’s decision to deploy conventional military forces to restore order in cities where the state governors refuse to deploy the National Guard. Mattis said he had never seen such actions in his lifetime, and that this was a constitutional violation.
Mattis is no historian, but he’s wrong on both counts, and he knows it.
Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
JFK federalized the Alabama National Guard to force the state’s Democratic governor George Wallace to desegregate the University of Alabama.
LBJ sent the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions to Detroit to put down the 1967 riots (with the aid of the Michigan National Guard, which was sent by Gov. George Romney).
George H.W. Bush federalized the California National Guard and supplemented them with the 7th Infantry Division and the Marines to stop the 1992 Rodney King riots (commanded in part by Mattis’ former Trump Administration colleague, John Kelly, by the way).
And there was a little precedent you might remember, set by President Lincoln in putting down a rebellion. He also used the military against northern rioters in NY who weren’t in grey uniforms and carrying the Stars and Bars.
James Mattis is a learned man and the idea that he didn’t know all of this is absurd. His commentary, like McClellan’s, was the personal opinion of a man no longer in his element and wondering where to go next. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Mattis is padding his bona-fides for an upcoming tell-all book about life in the Trump White House. That is a predictable pattern for former government officials seeking to remain relevant (and make a lot of quick cash), and Mattis already has one bestseller under his belt.
And it makes sense that Mattis would issue those statements now, to his target audience, for a likely publication in January when most books like these surface, but I could be wrong. Perhaps, like McClellan, he’d like to throw his hat into the ring of politics and run as a candidate. I wish him well in his future endeavors, but I kinda suspect he will soon fade into that corner of obscurity reserved for historical figures who try to play a game they were not designed for.
Hopefully Mattis will be remembered for being a fine general who engaged and defeated America’s enemies when others wallowed in pathetic inaction. That is a great legacy he could be proud of, and it’s more than you can say for George B. McClellan.