Best Friend, Worst Enemy: WWJD?

Review by Bill Doughty––

A Marine with a warrior heart must also have a trained mind, according to General James Mattis –– one of the key U.S. military leaders of this century. Among his many assignments, Mattis commanded the U.S. Joint Forces Command and U.S. Central Command. He led Marines in combat in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in the Middle East. And he served as the first Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration.

In his combat operations, Mattis faced jihadist enemies who ignored the rules and laws of war and put innocent civilians at risk, hiding behind women and children.

So, WWJD? What would Jim Mattis do –– if able –– about the situation now in Israel and Gaza? In “No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy: The Life of General James Mattis” (HarperCollins, 2018) author Jim Proser gives us a clue.

Mattis learned valuable lifelong lessons in Vietnam and its aftermath, as Marines and Sailors rescued refugees fleeing on small boats from Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam.

“The human aftermath of US political defeat in Vietnam and the ensuing political instability crowds every available inch of deck space around Mattis. They fill the seats hold of the ship, clutching their children and meager possessions, often shaking with fear and trauma. This is Mattis’s first real-world experience of war as a Marine. As soldiers of the navy, the first in and often the last out of smaller, third-world conflicts, Marines frequently end up with the responsibility for evacuation of war victims.”

Proser traces the arc of Mattis’s life, one dedicated to service, philosophy, and his fellow Marines and other service members. “No Better Friend” was published just months before Mattis resigned as SECDEF over differences with Trump (who later falsely claimed he fired Mattis).

The book concentrates on Mattis’s role in military operations, where we see his ethical leadership and humanism. The “Warrior Monk” –– callsign Chaos –– is against wholesale and indiscriminate warfare that ignores the effect on noncombatants. For example, after the Islamist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, Mattis recognized the danger of the Bush Administration’s race to invade Iraq under the pretense that Saddam Hussein was producing weapons of mass destruction.

“This rushed strategy by the Pentagon planners lacked deep thinking about the needs of the Iraqi people beyond their basic survival and provided few details on what Iraq’s tribes, communities, and cities would need after their country was invaded and their government overtaken. Mattis’s lifelong devotion to the study of philosophy and experience in occupied territories gave him a much keener sense of human needs, particularly in times of war. He could no more overlook the humanity of the Iraqis he would become responsible for under the rules of war than he could that of his own troops. In Mattis’s educated view, Iraqis and his occupying troops would have to form a community with specific physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.”

For Mattis, innocent families caught in the middle of war must have access to water, food, medicine, trash removal, and –– importantly –– education.

To some, "Peace through strength" means more violence and lethality; to Mattis and other thinking leaders, true strength rests in restraint, diplomacy, and ethical behavior and a clear warning to enemies against escalation.

Outside a medical clinic at Joint Security Station Douro, Iraq, Aug. 28, 2008. (PO2 Joan Kretschmer)

In the face of distrust and mistrust by local citizens in Iraq, Mattis instructed his Marines to show compassion and a helping hand, “first do no harm.” Proser says the general gave his Marines an extensive reading assignment leading up to engagement with the enemy. Mattis insisted “his Marines engage their minds before they engage their weapons.”

In a PBS interview in 2003, then-Major General Mattis said, “In other words, if the enemy tried to provoke us into a fight and that fight would cause innocent people to die, then we would forgo the fight. We would try to find a way to get them another day.”

In his “commander’s intent” instruction to troops on the eve of battle in Afghanistan, Mattis echoed lessons learned in Beirut and Baghdad: “We will be compassionate to all the innocent and deadly only to those who insist on violence, taking no ‘sides’ other than to destroy the enemy.”

“Show the people respect,” Mattis told his Marines.

At a school in Kandahar, Afghanistan, April 16, 2014 (Spc. Sara Wakai)

The least desirable outcome of war against an enemy is causing more animosity, hatred, and radicalization of the populace –– what Proser calls “a full-blown blood vendetta.”

The common enemy in the war on terrorism is Islamist extremism, which goes by many names: ISIS, ISIL, al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah (literally, “the party of God”). A common denominator in the support of violent extremism is Iran. In an interview with MIHS Islander in 2017, Mattis said:

“Until the Iranian people can get rid of this theocracy, these guys who think they can tell the people even which candidates they get a choice of, it’s going to be very, very difficult. This is a regime that employs surrogates, like Lebanese Hezbollah to threaten Israel…

“The Iranian people are not the problem. The Iranian people are definitely not the problem; it’s the regime that sends agents around to murder ambassadors in Pakistan or in Washington DC. It’s the regime that provides missiles to Lebanese Hezbollah or the Houthi in Yemen…

“So, somehow, you don’t want to unite the Iranian people with that unpopular regime because if you pressure them both then they will grow together. We’ve got to make certain that the Iranian people know that we don’t have any conflict with them.”

Mattis says that if the people have economic and political alternatives and “a stake in the future” they will be less likely to pick up a gun and lash out.

Staff Sgt. James Altman hands out book bags filled with school supplies to Iraqi children in Sahl, Al Assad, Iraq (Cpl. George Papastrat)

I finished this book in the midst of a pause in Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas and heightened calls by President Biden for more restraint by Israel in its bombing campaign, which has been killing hundreds of civilians in Gaza. Unfortunately, as I write this, Israel has apparently ended the truce and ceasefire, and is bombing military and civilian targets again. Hostage negotiators in Qatar are suspending talks for now. Hamas seems to be succeeding in its efforts to create more violence and division in the region and beyond.

This week, the New York Times published a devastating report that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government knew details about Hamas’s plan for an attack more than a year ago. Israel named the 40-page plan “Jericho Wall.” [It's a fraught name. Leading up to the attempted coup of at the U.S. Capitol of January 6, 2001, white Christian nationalists participated in Jericho Marches.]

Pre-MAGA conspiracist Proser is a gifted writer. His descriptions of the heat, stink, and noise of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are gripping and powerful. Intentionally or not, readers get a nuanced view of what General Jim Mattis would do to achieve actual "peace through strength."

Proser, by the way, avidly promotes the Big Lie about elections, vaccination misinformation, and gender indoctrination conspiracies. His writings and repostings downplay the January 6, 2001, insurrection of the Capitol by white Christian nationalists and Trump supporters.

Trump, Mattis, and then-CJCS Joseph Dunford host a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, for Memorial Day, May 28, 2018. (Sgt. Amber I. Smith)

In contrast, Mattis and retired General Joseph Dunford, former CJCS, each spoke out against the Big Lie and the J6 coup attempt on the same day of the insurrection.

Here's how CNN reported Mattis's and Dunford's position on J6:

"Trump's first secretary of defense, James Mattis, charged that Wednesday's 'violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump,' while Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN that he believes 'our leaders who have continued to undermine a peaceful transition in accordance with our Constitution have set the conditions for today's violence.'"

Overall, Proser’s biography of Mattis is a rewarding read, although it unsurprisingly lacks the political analysis of the Mattis versus Trump relationship and Mattis’s unambiguous warning that Trump and Trumpism are a real and growing threat to the U.S. Constitution and the nation.

Top photo: Afghan civilians and Cpl. William C. Kaylor, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, watch an MV-22 Osprey land at Forward Operating Base Geronimo, Helmand province, Afghanistan, July 14, 2010. (Sgt. Mark Fayloga)