Jim Mattis Quotes
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
Gen. James Mattis gave this piece of advice to Marines in Iraq, as quoted in “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq”
This appears to be the first American utterance of a longstanding doctrine of foreign policy.
In 1946 the maneuvering and posturing of the United Nations delegates led him to remark: Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
Note that Mormon doctrine requires that peace be offered 3 times before even a righteous war is begun. Under this doctrine, preemptive war would not be permissible, but diplomacy must be tried first and that by offering genuine peace. It is hard to apply this doctrine to the War on Terror, where there is no “other side” to negotiate with and the dispute is existential for democracy and freedom. The parenthetical references are to Mormon Scripture.
Theodore Roosevelt was the Presidential nominee. Johnson was a leader of some members of Congress some of whom were extreme isolationists and some of whom were Nazi sympathizers and Hitler admirers. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor later that year, Germany, fulfilling its treaty with Japan, declared war on America, Johnson’s group no longer mattered. Before WWII most Republicans were opposed to Defense Spending and accused the Democrats of being war hawks. After WWII, they flip flopped and became more hawkish than the Democrats who they accused of being soft on defense for years thereafter. See {631380} for President Roosevelt’s different view.
James Norman "Jim" Mattis is the 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the Trump administration, and a retired United States Marine Corps general. He previously served as the 11th Commander of United States Central Command, the Unified Combatant Command responsible for American military operations in the Middle East, Northeast Africa, and Central Asia, from August 11, 2010, to March 22, 2013. Mattis was confirmed 98–1 by the United States Senate on January 20, 2017, the first member of President Trump's cabinet to be confirmed.
