James Mattis – Fierce Warrior, Compassionate Leader, Principled Truth-Teller
Four-star Marine Corp General James Mattis has a nickname you’ve probably heard: Mad Dog. During his 2017 confirmation hearings, he told the Senate that he earned his famous nickname from reporters who had noted his public comments such as “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”
While such blunt but elegant statements are characteristic of Mattis, he is not fond of the nickname. In 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mattis’ troops began calling him “Mad Dog” for his devotion to them, and for his unflinching courage in taking on a fight. The name stuck after he led them in the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, one of the Iraq War’s most bitter engagements.
President Donald Trump, after his election win in 2016, excitedly told a crowd that he planned to appoint “Mad Dog Mattis” as Secretary of Defense. The president may have liked the sound of the name, but he would be getting more than he bargained for.
In December 2018, Mattis resigned from his position in Trump’s cabinet, in protest of the president’s chaotic policies and actions that, in Mattis’ view, were contributing to the destabilization of an established international order. However flawed it may have been, he believed this international order bolstered security, peace, and prosperity for an unprecedented number of the world’s population.
During his tenure as defense secretary, Mattis had emphasized the fight against the nuclear threat from North Korea, the need for continued stabilization in Afghanistan, and the ongoing fight against ISIS. He disagreed vehemently with the president on Syria, stating that a hasty withdrawal from the Syrian-Turkish border would further degrade conditions in Syria and aid in the rebuilding of ISIS.
A rare courage of conviction
Mattis has been unique among Trump cabinet officials in this regard. No other secretary in the current president’s cabinet has resigned and offered public reasons for doing so that call out the serious dangers Trump and his administration have created. In the words of a reporter for The Guardian, Mattis “shattered the glass” that should only be broken “in case of emergency.”
In Mattis’ stunning resignation letter, which he simultaneously made public, he noted his four decades of working and studying issues of grave international importance: war and peace, the development of sound strategy, the formation and continuation of strong and mutually respectful alliances. He noted the Trump administration’s ongoing problems in acknowledging the efforts of authoritarian adversaries, such as Russia and China, to undermine U.S. interests. He told the president that he had the right to work with a defense secretary who could offer opinions “better aligned with yours.”
Later, in June 2020, Mattis broke the silence he’d maintained since his resignation. In a public statement, he said that he stood squarely on the side of the tens of thousands of peaceful protestors demanding an end to police violence and discrimination, and a renewal of the American commitment to equality and the rule of law. He said that Trump’s administration had made a “mockery” of the Constitution and that Trump himself was bent on dividing the country. Mattis called out the president for issuing illegal orders demanding that military troops violate protestors’ constitutional rights.
A warrior’s warrior
Mattis has earned a reputation as a straight-talking, no-nonsense, flawlessly professional Marine. He’s known for his philosophical view on war as a means of advancing political causes that ensure freedom and justice. His intellect, self-discipline, moral integrity, and devout Catholic faith are so well known (along with the fact that he has never married) that they have earned him another nickname: “the warrior monk.”
Born in 1950 in Washington State, Mattis enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 18, simultaneously attending Central Washington University on the ROTC track. After graduating with a degree in history, he received a commission as a second lieutenant. In his early career, he was in command of several small units and directed the Marine recruiting station in Portland Oregon.
As lieutenant colonel, he was deployed in Operation Desert Shield during the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991). He led the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, which was among the leading assault units in the 1st Marine Division’s Regimental Combat Team 7. Mattis and his troops helped lead the way for American troops entering Kuwait. He received a Bronze Star for valor for his service in the Persian Gulf.
A decade later, Mattis was a brigadier general in command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade as preparation ramped up for the Afghanistan War after the 9/11 terror attacks. Top military leadership selected Mattis as the first Marine to lead Task Force 58, comprised of two Navy amphibious readiness groups. Task Force 58 played a major role in the capture of Kandahar in November 2001. Mattis gained the respect and admiration of his troops by fighting alongside them in Afghanistan.
As a major general, Mattis commanded the entire 1st Marine Division at the start of the Iraq War in 2003, the longest sustained battlefield advance in the entire history of the Marines. After the initial fighting, Mattis stayed on in Iraq to assist in the stabilization of the country.
Military historians consider the second battle of Fallujah (November - December 2004) the bloodiest of the Iraq War. Mattis, commanding the 1st Marine Division, and Colonel Willard A. Buhl led coalition troops fighting the insurgent extremists that had secured their hold on the city after the first battle of Fallujah earlier that year. The order to Mattis and Buhl: Seize a city from fighters who were determined to kill as many foreign troops as they could.
The coalition of American, British, and Iraqi forces were determined to cut the city off with checkpoints to better counter the insurgents. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled the encircled city. Coalition troops entered after inflicting heavy shelling and air strikes, making their way through booby traps and sniper fire as they conducted intense urban warfare for weeks. By December, coalition forces had largely subdued the city, with thousands of insurgent casualties and hundreds on the coalition side. Eighty-two Americans lost their lives.
Post-Iraq, Mattis went on to serve as a lieutenant general at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Virginia. During this time, he established the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, emphasizing the importance of developing knowledge of local languages and cultures to further military success abroad.
From 2006 to 2007, Mattis was Commander of U.S. Marine Forces Central Command in the Middle East. Over the following three years as a general, he served as Commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command and as Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation at NATO. He headed CENTCOM (United States Central Command) from 2010 until his retirement as a Marine in 2013.
In 2019, Mattis published the book Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. The work distills his lifelong thinking on strategy and leadership and tells stories from his career as a leader of troops in the Persian Gulf War, Iraq War, and Afghanistan War. He offers insights on creating peace, as well as waging war, and on the vital necessity of forming strong international alliances. He additionally provides a highly critical view of the current short-sighted thinking that hampers America’s global reputation.
Through this book and throughout his life, Mattis has provided a strong voice of moral leadership from a military standpoint. His military philosophy stands in sharp contrast to the Trump administration: while Trump would recklessly turn the country’s military on its own people when they protest, Mattis urges restraint and respect for the bond of trust between the military and civilian society. And while Trump would seemingly turn his back on the US’ allies if it brought him praise from dictators, Mattis knows that the country can only face the dangers of the 21st century world with strong international alliances.