Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis Resigns - Trump Went a Step Too Far

are you ****ing kidding me

 

He was determined to not listen to anyone, at least not in the US.

Even Erdogan was caught off guard. Wonder who was not caught off guard?

https://apnews.com/ec2ed217357048ff998225a31534df12

Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official. While Turkey has made incursions into Syria in the past, it does not have the necessary forces mobilized on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are positioned, the official said.

Over the weekend, the national security team raced to come up with a plan that would reverse, delay or somehow limit effects of the withdrawal, the officials said.

On Monday, Bolton, Mattis and Pompeo met at the White House to try to plot a middle course. But they were told by outgoing chief of staff John Kelly and his soon-to-be successor Mick Mulvaney that Trump was determined to pull out and was not to be delayed or denied, according to the officials. The trio met again on Tuesday morning to try to salvage things, but were again rebuffed, the officials said.

 

Classic Trumpanzee response. A string of ha ha ha followed by pwned followed by a movie quote.

 

Hitler was never a president.

 

You are just about to have peace negotiations with the Taliban - why do it BEFORE you negotiate and not AFTER????

I thought Trump knew how to make a deal.

 

Just curious who are the current top three ranked presidents on this list?

 

Ok tell me what it is about then.

I mean even Trump has said it was about Isis.

 

1. Trump
2. Buchanan
3. Berlusconi

 

I'm under-qualified to make strategic suggestions about how to withdraw from the Middle East, either militarily or diplomatically. All I can say is I support the end goal, but I'm not surprised to hear that experts think the methodology is, to be kind, terrible. This is Donald Trump we are dealing with, after all.

 

another perspective, always thought-provoking

https://ethicsalarms.com/2018/12/21/ethics-observations-on-the-mattis-resignation/

Ethics Observations On The Mattis Resignation


President Trump announced that he was ending the U.S. mission in Syria, and drawing down the troop level in Afghanistan. His Secretary of Defense,General Mattis, resigned in protest, and copied his letter of resignation to the world.

The news media, social media, and full time anti-Trump hysterics, among others, went bonkers.

• What’s going on here? A President who has long held that U.S. domestic priorities are more important than “being the world’s policeman” followed through on his promise. As is his wont, he sprung the actual news without laying a foundation to cushion the blow. Nobody knows whether the decisions will work out or not, but the assumption is that because this President is the one making the decisions, they must be stupid, evil, or both. This, despite the fact that Barack Obama essentially did the same thing regarding Iraq, except that Iraq gave much more promise of stabilizing with continued U.S. presence. Syria is still in chaos, and nobody can confidently say when and if it will not be. As for Afghanistan, the U.S. has been expending lives and treasure there for a mind-blowing 17 years. What is the mission? Funny—I thought the original mission was to punish the country for sponsoring the 9/11 attacks. We could have declared the point made long, long ago. Is the President wrong to say “Enough is enough”?

I have no idea—and neither do you.

• Having no idea, not having seen the data, not having been advised, and not being President of the United States, I have little basis to challenge or deride the decision. But what’s really going on here is what has been going on since January, 2017. Any decision or action by this President is immediately assumed to be wrong. The analysis attached to it afterwards is superfluous. The position is that President Trump did it, it’s wrong because he’s a Nazi/idiot/ grifter /fool, and that’s all we need to know.

This, of course, makes it impossible, literally impossible, to get honest, trustworthy analysis about anything.

• Anyone who criticizes Trump in public, even certifiable slime like Steve Bannon, James Comey, and Omarosa, suddenly is embraced by “the resistance ” and the news media using the formula that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This rewards unethical conduct, and “Mad Dog” appears to have fallen into the trap, to his eventual shame. As a lawyer, I know it is unethical to drop a client, my employer, and make any pubic statements whatsoever impugning his or her judgment or conduct. It is also unethical to do this in any professional relationship. Professionals know this: I presume at one time Mattis knew this. But having paid attention to how routine betrayals of this President have been cheered and praised, he apparently couldn’t resist temptation.

Now, as a lawyer, my duties are codified. That doesn’t mean that professionals who don’t have the same duties codified aren’t obligated to follow them.

• Astoundingly—in fact, this is a microcosm of the entire 2016 Post Election Train Wreck, and the false narratives it has spawned—the fact that Mattis behaved atrociously, disloyally and destructively by writing and circulating his resignation letter is being blamed on Trump, as if Mattis is the first Secretary of Defense to resign over policy disagreements with the President. Of course he isn’t—he’s just the first to be so unprofessional about it. This is the “Trump violates norms” narrative, the “Trump made everyone else violate norms” chapter.

Michael Beschloss, the once respectable Presidential historian who has found it profitable (or something) to re-brand himself as an anti-Trump partisan hack—he was the one who on election night launched the myth that poor Hillary was bound to lose because Americans almost never elect the same party to the White House in three straight years—except for 1988, 1948, 1944, 1940, 1928, 1924, 1908…you know, virtually never—took to the airwaves to point out that Mattis’s public resignation was also virtually unique (Cyrus Vance quit Carter in protest, but wasn’t nasty about it, and apparently doesn’t count).

Well, why do you think they call him “Mad Dog”?

• I especially love the pundits and social media trolls who are writing that Mattis was “the only adult in the room,” the room being the Trump Presidency. Not only is this pure ad hominem, does it occur to these sudden fans of perpetual warfare that the only adult in the room just threw a tantrum?

​

 

why don't you start a gofundme to investigate Mattis LOL

 

I'm saying why they want to stay isn't about ISIS, the US engagement with ISIS has taken all their territory, this was finished last week (the radicals who beheaded the scandinavian girls cited the loss of their town last week as the reason). What's left of ISIS is in land completely surrounded by Assad, which isn't the US' problem, nor have they been dealing with them.

The only reason to stay now is the shitfight with Assad to the south and the multiple forces in the northwest, but they desperately want people to believe that ISIS is still a threat because it's easier to sell that lie, than try to sell the truth.

But hey, the neocons can go home now, as being interventionist democrats is a thing again.

 

Berlusconi was never a president either...

 

Democratically elected leader - president / prime minister, Hitler was not elected, he was appointed Chancellor.

 

I can't get behind this. It's not just Mattis, almost every single one of his cabinet appointments has quit or been fired. So in all those cases Trump knew better than them?

Sorry I just can't believe that a guy who was a reality TV show host and a real estate magnate until 2 years ago has a better understanding of strategic policy than a lifelong military General.

 

Leaving Syria is a mistake. Mathis has been serving this country since 1969. The fact that he resigns citing disagreements with the current administration is dubious.

 

Sounds good but in practice that’d be bad.

 

Um, yes he was, the Chancellor is the same thing as the prime minister, it's just a different title for a different country. The Prime Minister of Italy is appointed by its president in the same way the Chancellor of Germany is appointed by theirs, the reason why they're the same is they're both based on the Holy Roman Empire which incorporated all of Germany and most of Italy.

The Italian and Weimar systems are almost identical in function where the prime minister/chancellor and all the ministers must be appointed by their respective President, but it's not arbitrary, they won't appoint people that don't have the electoral numbers to pass legislation, and they'll sometimes refuse to appoint people they consider "problematic" like the recent Italian first choice of Finance minister.

As is normal in those countries, when unable to form a governing coalition, Hitler called for a new election in March 1933 (Italy faced that prospect this year until Lega Nord and Five Star agreed) in which he and his coalition partner (DNVP) got 340 of the 647 seats, a governing coalition. Of course Hitler then used this plus other measurements to set the stage for the not so democratic election of November, 1933 where the Nazis won all 661 seats.

Your understanding of civics here seems to be equivalent to your understanding of economics.

 

It does not matter,it was mostly useless, air campaign is what was used against IS. A lot has changed since 2016:

• MBS wants Assad to stay,birds of feather's things
• MBS armed the Kurds to upset Erdugan, Erdugan opened a military base in Qatar and Sudan in response
• the Free Syrian Army was abolished
• Trump demanded MBS to pay for US forces to stay or he would withdraw, too late though ..
• Putin won the trophy of 250 billions$ from Iranian Caspian sea oil resources
• Iran is more concerned with cracking down the uprising from Iraqi Shiea
• 80% of Syrians lives in tents,those loyalists to Assad get paid only100$/month, the overwhelming Kurds without citizenship,Assad can't step his foot outside his without Russia, but also Russia is looking for new allies with deep buckets,militants want to get paid,no one is willing to pay nor rebuild, TBD..

 

No not really. We never should have gone there in the first place. Bring them all home.