'Catastrophic decisions': Mattis savages Obama for 'failure' in foreign policy

[Valin]

Washington Examiner

Kelly Jane Torrance

September 03, 2019

Though former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis mentions his last boss, President Trump, only in the opening pages of his new book, the Washington establishment seems certain the tome on leadership is directed at him, with one observer calling it “mainly a 100,000-word subtweet.”

Mattis says he won’t discuss a sitting president, though it seems clear he disdains Trump’s leadership style. But he is scathing about a former president in Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, which is released today, and he doesn’t hesitate to name him: Barack Obama.

The former general's opinion of Obama, for whom Mattis was head of U.S. Central Command from 2010 until 2013, might be summed up by single entry in the book’s index: “Obama, Barack, strategic thinking lacking.”

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Mattis summarizes his time commanding CENTCOM, overseeing military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia until Obama fired him, in harsh terms: “It was to be a time when I would witness duty and deceit, courage and cowardice, and, ultimately, strategic frustration.” The general was in charge of two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, though one ended on his watch — or so the president said.

“You know I say what I mean and I mean what I saw,” Obama said in fall 2012, as Mattis notes. “I said I’d end the war in Iraq. I ended it.”

Mattis follows this up with an even more succinct statement: “Rhetoric doesn’t end conflicts.”

He details in the book how Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, who was in charge of Iraq policy, were “ignoring reality” in the country and made a political decision to withdraw troops, a choice that allowed the return of al Qaeda in a new and more ambitious guise, the Islamic State.

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[Valin]

 

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