Semper Fi, Gen. Mattis

Michael Ledeen:
General James Mattis has left Central Command, as of Friday, and it’s just as well, since he is entirely the wrong man to preside over our retreat from Afghanistan, and in all likelihood from the broader region. Mattis, the most beloved Marine officer of this generation, is an attack dog, our Patton (like Patton, he is a very cultured man who composes poetry in Greek, and his famously sulfuric language may well be, as it was in Patton’s case, a conceit used to bond with his fighters rather than a reflection of his true rhetorical preference).

Barbara Ledeen once sat next to him at dinner and pronounced him one of the most interesting men she had ever met. Which is quite a compliment.

Among my collection of secret documents is a poster design–not even the Marine Corps could actually put it out–featuring a quotation from General Mattis to “Iraqi sheikhs.” It begins “I come in peace, I did not bring artillery,” and it ends “you F**ck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
... 
He had an eloquence that Gen. Patton would appreciate, but not many politicians until they needed him.  He will be missed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more