It's Past Time For Gens. Kelly And Mattis To Step Up

Their silence is both deafening and damning.

Former Trump Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly (USMC, ret.) and former Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis (USMC, ret.) have so far held their tongues about what they know of the explosive accounts of Cadet Bone Spurs' despicable and defaming comments about American war dead and MIA.  Both would be in a position to publicly go on record confirming the stories in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg and in the Washington Post about Cadet Bone Spurs' calling fallen soldiers "suckers" and "losers," and wondering why we made efforts to find Americans missing in action.  But, to date, they haven't.

Clearly, a rattled and paranoid Cadet Bone Spurs thinks Gen. Kelly ("or a guy like a John Kelly") may have been the "former senior administration official" who was one of the sources of the story, and is out with a typically dishonest prebuttal denigrating Kelly.  Kelly has already obliquely criticized Cadet Bone Spurs as lacking character, and Mattis issued a powerful rebuke (via Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic -- hmmm) saying Cadet Bone Spurs was a threat to the Constitution and was dividing America.  They've seen this malignant menace close-up and recognize the danger he poses to our democracy, particularly as he gets more desperate to foil the likely results of the November election.

They can do their patriotic duty now by going on the record with what they've heard and seen.  Their further silence is damning, for Cadet Bone Spurs but also for them.

Mattis Hits Trump's "Three Years Without Mature Leadership"; Trump "Tries To Divide Us"

The full, blistering statement of Gen. James Mattis (USMC, Ret.), former Trump Secretary of Defense (our emphasis):

In Union There Is Strength

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

 ___________________________

It's about time.  Thank you.

QOTD

"I think the only person in the military that Mr. Trump doesn't think is overrated is Colonel Sanders." -- former Trump Defense Secretary and Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, at the Al Smith dinner Thursday night.  Though we already noted Mattis, at the same dinner, skewered Trump's use of "bone spurs" to get a deferment during the Vietnam War (in response to Trump calling him "the world's most overrated general"), this was a quip too good to let pass.  Now, let's hear what you really think of the chickenshit moron!

QOTD: Earning Your Spurs

In the White (Supremacist) House meeting with Speaker Pelosi on October 16, draft- dodging Kremlin asset Donald "Bone Spurs" Trump called former Defense Secretary and Marine Corps General James Mattis "the world's most overrated general" after being told that Mattis said ISIS would resurge following Trump's betrayal of the Kurds.

Last night, at the annual Alfred E. Smith dinner in New York, Mattis clapped back, to hearty applause and laughter:

"I'm not just an overrated general. I’m the world’s greatest overrated general, I'm honored to be called that by Donald Trump, because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actor. So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals. [snip] I earned my spurs on the battlefield; Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor." 

Perhaps Mattis will now feel unconstrained to open up about what he witnessed while serving in Trump's cabinet.

BONUS:  Another former senior officer is speaking out.  Admiral William McRaven (USN-Ret.) said in a New York Times op/ed that many in the military and special ops community believed America "was under attack from within."  McRaven was in command of the operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden.