Petraeus’s Successor Is Known for Impolitic Words

WASHINGTON — To those who have served under him, Gen. James N. Mattis is the consummate Marine commander, a warrior who chooses to lead from the front lines and speaks bluntly rather than concerning himself with political correctness.

But General Mattis, President Obama’s choice to command American forces across the strategic crescent that encompasses Iraq and Afghanistan, has also been occasionally seen by his civilian superiors as too rough-edged at a time when military strategy is as much about winning the allegiance of local populations as it is about firepower.

If his predecessor as the commander of Central Command, Gen. David H. Petraeus, is known for his skill at winning over constituencies outside the military, General Mattis, 59, has a reputation for candid, Patton-esque statements that are not always appreciated inside or outside the Pentagon.

“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” General Mattis said during a forum in San Diego in 2005. “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.”

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Petraeus’s Successor Is Known for Impolitic Words

Seeing Gen. Mattis picked by Obama was as surprising to me as it would be if I were picked to be the President of our local TEA Party group. Fire eating LEADERS aren’t appreciated in some places, of that I am certain.

Gen. Mattis and I share a lot of the same views, we are not politically correct, we speak our minds and don’t give a damn who likes it, and we see victory achieved by actually defeating the enemies of this nation, not by talking them to death.

Gen. James N. Mattis is a Marine. He is a tribute to the Corps, and no Mr. Obama, it is NOT pronounced *corpse*. Mattis leads, he doesn’t hold a ‘beer summit’, although I would bet that his staff has enjoyed a celebratory drink on occasion!

In these times of uber-PCness it truly is a shock that Gen. Mattis has been chosen as the leader of CentCom. Not to denigrate the DoD and CentCom, but in the current administration, oh hell, in many PAST administrations, the POTUS seems to think that the title of Commander in Chief automatically makes him the ultimate warfighter.

It does not.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described General Mattis as “one of our military’s outstanding combat leaders and strategic thinkers.”

That description, “one of our military’s outstanding combat leaders and strategic thinkers.”, has me wondering how long Gen. Mattis can, or will last working under the most gutless POTUS in U.S. history. Barack Hussein Obama has openly demonstrated his disdain for the military and law enforcement. An un-PC Marine General is bound to offend Obama, sooner or later, and I am betting it will be sooner rather than later.

But the general angered one of Mr. Gates’s predecessors, Donald H. Rumsfeld, in 2001 with another remark that played well with his Marines, but not with civilian leaders in Washington. After Marines under his command seized an airstrip outside Kandahar, establishing the first forward operating base for conventional forces in the country, General Mattis declared, “The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.”

Mr. Rumsfeld and other senior officials believed that these words violated the official message of the invasion, that the United States had no desire to occupy a Muslim nation, but was fighting to free Afghanistan from the Taliban tyranny.

As I have stated on numerous occasions, Donald Rumsfeld was a less than competent leader and was *Peter Principled* throughout most of his career. Rumsfeld was no more a military leader than was George W. Bush or is Barack Hussein Obama.

General Mattis is viewed differently by those who have been with him on the front lines.

It was the first winter of the war in Afghanistan, when the wind stabbed like an ice pick and fingertips froze to triggers, but a young lieutenant’s blood simmered as he approached a Marine fighting hole and spotted three heads silhouetted in the moonlight. He had ordered only two Marines to stand watch while the rest of the platoon was ordered to rest before an expected Taliban attack at first light.

“I dropped down into the hole, and there were two junior Marines,” the lieutenant, Nathaniel C. Fick, recalled of that overnight operation outside Kandahar. “But the third was General Mattis. He has a star on his collar and could have been sleeping on a cot with a major waiting to make him coffee. But he’s out there in the cold in the middle of the night, doing the same thing I’m doing as a first lieutenant — checking on his men.”

Can ANY of you, even remotely, imagine the POTUS inconveniencing himself by taking a nap in the chair of an air conditioned office? I can’t.

Gen. Mattis is a leader, he is a Marine. I wish him luck in dealing with the PC politicians that will backstab him at the earliest opportunity.