There are other big, even huge, differences between Mattis and Trump. Mattis, for example, is an avid reader. He prepared a reading list for his officers before deploying to Iraq in 2004 and required that it be studied. Tip to OSD-Policy: Start reading the works of Sir Hew Strachan, Mattis’ favorite strategist.
Mattis is against isolationism and a fan of what he calls “continued American engagement in the world.” He also believes that “compromise [is] … a fundamental necessity at the heart of democratic government.” (Warning to Pentagoners: Mattis also is anti-PowerPoint, which he says “makes us stupid.”) And Trump avoided the draft, while retired Marine Colonel Gary Anderson calls Mattis “the finest combat leader we’ve produced since Korea.”
Mattis also is a fiscal conservative. This is not a bad thing to have for someone running the Pentagon. It also may make Mattis skeptical of some of Trump’s promise to cut taxes while boosting defense spending and making American infrastructure great again.
Most of all, I would say, Mattis is meditative. In reviewing the case of Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, an Army artillery battalion commander who fired a handgun next to the ear of a detainee he was interrogating, Mattis wrote, “this shows a commander who has lost his moral balance or watched too many Hollywood movies.” (After leaving the Army, West went on to become a one-term Republican congressman from Florida and then, of course, a Fox news commentator.)
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