The full statement by General James Mattis, who was Trump’s Secretary of Defense.
James Mattis full statement
In Union There Is Strength
I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict— between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part.
Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more
forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.'” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
James Mattis
Trump supporter: “Balderdash!!!!! He’s just looking for a leg up in the political world!”
There has been widespread denial of the use of “teargas” to remove the protestors in the right wing media propaganda machine. It is important to understand that when any other media outlets use the word “teargas”, they are referring to any of the many aerosolized substances that produce the same set of effects, profuse tearing and burning of the eyes, irritation of the nose mouth and lungs, etc. There is massive and incontrovertible proof that such agents were used. The right wing propaganda machine seeks to obfuscate this via the sophistry of the fact that the 2 agents that are technically known as teargas, CS & CN, were not the ones that were used. Obviously this makes their claims of no teargas use an entirely disingenuous deflection. Smoke grenades were also used in combination with the “teargas” agents. The ones verified so far are pepper balls which are used against specific individuals and canisters of OC, which is in the pepper spray family that were used against crowds.
Klondike Jack,
Unfortunately for Trump, the brutal response to peaceful assembly was captured for TV. We saw what happened.
Thanks for printing his comments, Diane.
It’s come to this…in our lifetimes….in the United States of America.
I think this quote is from Mattis’s book. Applies to the Idiot and to post you just did on Peter Greene’s thought on teaching literature, or anything, for that matter:
“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”
Amen to this. Mattis is a deeply learned guy.
Franklin Roosevelt was blocked from packing the Supreme Court, despite a landslide electoral victory in 1936. Two reasons,: Americans believed in the need for checks on executive authority; and the Supreme Court justices publicly opposed the move. Now more than ever, leaders like Mattis need to speak out.
** Diane** Below is a relevant OP-ED in today’s LA TIMES (Roth)
Victims of Trump’s magical thinking
“The line between reality and wis
“President Trump told the nation that he can stop the unrest from nationwide protests and restore security in America: ‘We will succeed 100%. We will succeed. Our country always wins.’
hes is fuzzy for narcissists, who think what they desire will happen.
“Two weeks ago, he told the press he was taking hydroxychloroquine to ward off COVID-19. ‘I take it because I think I hear very good things,’ he said. ‘I want the people of this nation to feel good. I don’t want them being sick.’ So what if clinical tests have found the drug carried risks for coronavirus patients, with no benefits?
“Trump’s comments in these two instances and many others during his time in office are indicative of his magical thinking.
“Magical thinkers are impatient and go with their gut. And in the early days of the pandemic, Trump happily declared that the coronavirus would just disappear like a miracle one day.
“’Magical thinking’ is a phenomenon long studied by psychologists and anthropologists. It refers to the belief that one can have an impact on events simply by thinking in a certain way or following a certain ritual. One’s wishes simply become reality — a way of thinking not uncommon in young children. Sometimes called a ‘pre-operational’ stage of cognition, it is characterized by pretending rather than using information, by a reluctance to consider the points of view of other people, and by a lack of logical reasoning.
“Magical thinking persists in some adults because, occasionally, it works. Placebos, too, can be surprisingly effective. And positive thinking can produce positive results in some aspects of our lives.
“When people feel helpless, or when they are under a great deal of strain, magical thinking can create a sense of control and restore confidence. But ignoring reality and closing oneself off from the viewpoints of others to build self-assurance in the face of adversity is often associated with narcissism. For narcissists, the border between wishes and reality is fuzzy, and part of their self-aggrandizing tendencies is to believe that whatever they want to happen will happen.
“It rarely works out well to simply assume that the world will conform to one’s wishes, and in times of crisis, it can be disastrous. It might lead you to demand that governors open churches ‘right now,’ as Trump said recently, because he knows faith leaders ‘quite well’ and understands that they ‘don’t want anything bad to happen’ to their people.
“Although this was surely an attempt to rally a political base of religious believers, it also exemplifies Trump’s view that his very commitment to an idea makes the idea real. As long as the commitment is intense, the narcissist believes things will work out. Freud pointed out long ago that this substitution of intensity for reality is the remnant of an infantile stage of development in which the person is ‘only affected by what is thought with intensity and pictured with emotion, whereas agreement with external reality is a matter of no importance.’
“Education in general and science in particular are antidotes to narcissistic overconfidence. I see this regularly as a professor at and president of Wesleyan University. Students often arrive thinking they already know how to be successful in a school setting. They quickly discover that even when they work really hard, there is always more to do. Getting really good in a field you care about takes more than confidence and wishful thinking.
“Every discovery in science is accompanied by the opening of new questions, and a liberal education helps students gauge the depths of their ignorance while giving them the skills to create and test solutions to problems in the world. Educators don’t promise to reveal the truth, but they do promise to expose errors and create new areas of inquiry.
“Students and teachers recognize that nobody has all the answers and that good questions are the ones that lead to more investigations. The best teachers retain a sense of intellectual humility. One thing Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, knows for certain is that he doesn’t know everything.
“Hence the tension between the president’s magical thinking and the advice he is getting from his scientific advisors. They must see the danger posed by Trump’s wishful thinking during this deadly public health crisis.
“Now in giving angry, fearful advice to governors — ‘if you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time’ — Trump falls back on magical thinking when confronted by domestic unrest he doesn’t understand.
“A crisis is exactly the time when people are scared and confused. Unfortunately, it’s at such times that anti-intellectualism and magical thinking offer consolations to those afraid of what they don’t know.”
END QUOTE
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/desktop/latimes/default.aspx?edid=9a37d0d0-4c7a-4667-a385-6e6a7173bc4e
I messed up the beginning of that LA Times quote. here it is again:
“The line between reality and wishes is fuzzy for narcissists, who think what they desire will happen.” CBK
Generals and others in the military are speaking out against Trump’s use of the military for civilian unrest. In addition to Jim Mattis, there is Mark Esper, Mark Milley, and retired Lt Gen. Honoré. May the numbers increase. So the big question is how or whether people like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell will respond to Trump’s putdowns of these voices from the military.
By the way, the Senate Intelligence Committee quietly approved on Wednesday a measure that would require presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election influence to federal authorities, a move taken in response to Russian election interference in 2016. The bill included whistleblower protections prohibiting against “leaking a whistleblower identity.” The bill still has to be approved by the full Senate, but it might be attached to National Defense Authorization Act which the Senate and Trump must approve and cannot avoid.
The military leaders serve the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump expects them to serve only his own personal agenda. Trump cannot disagree with anyone. He holds personal grudges and defames them on social media. It only shows the world what a small minded, mean spirited individual he is. Many are suffering from Trump fatigue. Even the thinking conservatives have had their fill of his divisive hate and fake “strong man” act.
retired teacher . . . it’s about time? CBK
This retired AF officer agrees with the General 100%!
This is off topic but…
The White House’s leading infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, told CNN on Wednesday that public schools might be able to reopen in the fall. “Children can get infected, so, yes, so you’ve got to be careful,” Fauci said. “Now, to make an extrapolation that you shouldn’t open schools, I think, is a bit of a reach.”
Boiling water is hot enough to burn skin. But to make an extrapolation that you shouldn’t stick your finger in boiling water, I think, is a bit of a reach.
Has this man been in the company of Trump too long?
Mattis is a brilliant, deeply learned guy. An emphatic yes to what he has to say here. And Mattis was absolutely right to resign in response to Trump’s unilateral decision to abandon our allies, the Kurds, to please Trump’s pal Vlad. Trump’s action was treasonous.
Before we begin to beatify Mattis, take a look at how he was more than a bit player in the Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes scam. He used his authority to funnel contracts to Theranos and when a Lt. Col. cited problems that ultimately proved to be much worse than feared, Mattis bullied him and killed his career. When he retired, Mattis cashed in with a lucrative board membership where he chose to close his eyes and remain uninformed. It’s all very well documented in John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Holmes is scheduled to go on trial this summer, which will probably be postponed by the pandemic. I’m sure Mattis would like that story to be quashed, because it will tarnish his halo quite a bit. I’m pleased he did what he did, however late it was, and he is certainly an accomplished man. But let’s not go overboard here. Also, he certainly shouldn’t be put anywhere near elective office. Let him teach some war history courses in eastern Washington.
I simply said that he is a deeply learned man and that he is right about Trump and about equal treatment under the law being a concept we should all be able to get behind. Both undeniable.
Whoops, sorry, this was meant for Lloyd’s post below. The VP talk scared me. I agree he is a learned man, which is why I posted the quote I did earlier. But his time to affect public policy has hopefully ended. Next time I’ll pay more attention to where I click reply.
Mattis seems to be a respected guy. Still, one has to wonder where he was when the Orange in Chief asked him to be in a presidency that had campaigned on hatred, sought to divide the public, suppressed votes, activiely engaged the help of a foreign nation, and hated all outsiders. I am not very smart and I knew all of this. Mattis is pretty smart. He had to have known that theis president would choose heads of departments that would oppose the very mission they were to do. He had to have known that this.
It would be very difficult, after a career in the military, to turn down the top job. He did the job as he saw fit, DESPITE Trump. I, for one, am glad that there were some adults in the room with Donnie Dumbo.
I know Biden said he will pick a woman to be his VP running mate, but Mattis would have been a good choice, too now that Mattis is standing up to Tru-EMPTY DUMP-ty
Maclean’s is news from Canada.
Vote that Willy Lump Lump out of the White House
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police in the U.S., Maclean’s asked Black Canadian writers to pen open letters to America addressing the recent upheaval and the task of confronting racism that—deny it as some Canadians might—persists in their own country.
Dear Dad,
It has been a century since you were born in Missouri; 75 years since you served as a Black, non-commissioned officer in the American army in World War II; 67 years since you moved to Canada after marrying my white mother in Washington; 58 years since you became the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission; and 17 years since you have been resting in Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
I remember you on Sunday mornings: you would play Count Basie on your record player, and using a miniature fork, you’d pry smoked oysters from a tin and place them onto Ritz crackers. With mustard.
After the war, when I was just 10, you told me that your own father told you that you were not made to live in a segregated nation. After you moved to Toronto with mom, you made sure that your three children knew that Canada and the United States were founded on misdeeds—stealing land from Indigenous peoples, disenfranchising and killing them, and using enslaved peoples…
Your slender fingers ensnare another Ritz cracker. Playfully, because you laugh to survive, you drum up your most derisive term for an ignoramus and say, “That no-account in the White House is a Willy Lump Lump.
“Do not let him and his enablers out of your sight. Raise hell until the cows come home. Put more into education and anti-poverty programs. And vote that fool and all of his down-ballot folks out of office.”…
https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/vote-that-willy-lump-lump-out-of-the-white-house/
wonderful, Carol. Thanks for sharing this!
I like Eugene Robinson. Here is is equating what happened in D.C. with the uprisings in Chile over Pinochet.
……………………………….
Trump is uniting Americans — against him By Eugene Robinson
June 4, 2020 at 4:21 p.m. CDT
The first time I witnessed the use of tear gas and brutal force against lawful, peaceful protesters was in Chile during the reign of military dictator Augusto Pinochet. The shocking abuse of state power we saw near the White House on Monday reminded me of that place and time — and made clear the peril we now face.
Pinochet had seized power in 1973 in a bloody U.S.-backed coup. In 1988, believing himself invincible, he called for a plebiscite to give him eight more years in power. I covered the run-up to that vote. And when those calling on Chileans to vote “no” held rallies, Pinochet’s goon squads inevitably found or invented some reason to disperse the crowds with overwhelming force. The worst kind of tear gas, I discovered the hard way, was some concoction the strongman had bought from the apartheid government in South Africa.
That sort of thing doesn’t happen here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Except this week, in Lafayette Square.
After mounted police, flash-bang explosives, rubber bullets and tear gas had cleareda path for him, President Trump preened and strutted to his Dear Leader photo op like a wannabe Pinochet, trailed by his wannabe junta — Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Attorney General William P. Barr, daughter Ivanka Trump and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was, absurdly, wearing camouflage fatigues as though he were in Baghdad or Kabul, not downtown Washington…
The passionate but entirely peaceful crowd was much larger than Monday’s, and I was struck by its rainbow diversity; African Americans may have been a plurality, but there were also whites, Latinos and Asian Americans in substantial numbers. It wasn’t possible to observe the six-foot rule for social distancing, but most of the protesters were wearing masks or bandannas. Some of the face coverings bore the same messages as the handwritten signs some people held up: “Black Lives Matter.” “Stop Police Murder.” “I Can’t Breathe.”
I ran into the Rev. Rob Fisher, rector of St. John’s, who said he had been given no warning that the president intended to use his church as a backdrop for photographs that are already being used in Trump campaign ads. “The only way to the next step is that voices need to be heard, not tanks and guns,” Fisher said….
Separating the protesters from Lafayette Square and the White House beyond was a line of federal officers, clad in riot gear, who wore no insignia or name tags that would allow them to be identified and held accountable for anything they did during the demonstration. Behind them were military-style troop carriers; behind the vehicles, a hastily erected black chain-link fence. If all of that was intended to intimidate, it spectacularly failed.
All those years ago in Chile, Pinochet thought he could use force to intimidate citizens into submission, too. The people ended up booting him out of power in a plebiscite and renewing the nation’s treasured democratic traditions. Sic semper tyrannis.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-uniting-americans–against-him/2020/06/04/83289834-a69a-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html
Mattis:
“We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers”
Has he been watching the news lately? How are things going in mid-town Manthattan these days? Philadelphia? Chicago? New York? Atlanta? Los Angeles?
I did not vote for him, but in all fairness, Trump did not “divide” Americans; 90 percent or more were horrified by the Floyd incident. What divided them was the looting, rioting, burning and murder of the “protesters.”
He quotes James Madison :
“America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign invaders than an America disunited.” Hmm… how did that work out for Madison, who had to run out of the White House before the British did to it what so many of our fellow “Americans” are doing to our Democratic cities. Perhaps this vastly “learned” man needs to read up a little more on history and the constitution.
If we are going to be using mob tactics to change our laws and presidents, then America no longer exists. Coups against democratically (however much you dislike them) leaders are what THIRD world nations do.
If you don’t want to put up with Trump for another four years, then work to to replace him in November or work to change the constitution. Perhaps a parliamentary system where we can replace leaders at any time would be more beneficial…but do it legally – not by mob and/or military coup.
It is shocking — but typical — to see a Trump supporter claiming that peaceful protesting like MLK Jr’s March on Washington is “mob violence”. This is the racism of Trump and his enablers like Abby, which explains why she is so determined to normalize Trump’s actions as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of white Trump-loving marchers carrying assault weapons when they protest.
I can imagine if Trump had been president instead of JFK in 1963, he and Barr would have ordered MLK Jr. and all the people at the March on Washington to be teargassed and attacked, and Abby would have posted that MLK deserved it for demanding that mob violence replace democracy.
The only people who are supporting mob violence are those who support white right wing Trump supporters storming state capitols with their assault weapons for the right to get a haircut.
You are right that the “murder” of the protesters did shock people — the murder of a young college student protesting peacefully who died because of an allergic reaction by police enabled to pepper spray peaceful marchers.
Weird that Abby approves of that, but if the police lay one finger on the white Trump supporters marching with assault weapons, Abby will object strongly.
Sorry NYCP, but I did not vote for Trump in the last election and will not in this one. I will most likely stay home. I simply believe in the Constitution and the Rule of Law which Democrat leaders apparently no longer do.