Archive for the ‘Senate Armed Services Committee’ tag
General Mattis’ Senate Hearing
“Violence and progress exists in Afghanistan and sometimes the violence blinds us to the progress because it’s so heartbreaking to see innocent people murdered for no reason by an enemy who intentionally fights from among innocent people.”
“We have the most ethically grounded military in the history of warfare and yet somehow we are not getting the message out that we are the good guys.” General James N. Mattis, USMC July 27, 2010
We are at war but I suppose most people didn’t take the time to watch General Mattis testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee today in review of his nomination as Commander of U.S. Central Command. Now of course you know I watched every second of it and boy was I glad that I had read the book Imperial Grunts. It was a tremendous primer for understanding the scope of responsibility tasked to the Commander of CENTCOM and the reason for so many questions regarding CENTCOM’s relationship to countries outside it’s Area of Responsibility. There is so much more than the war in Afghanistan for my Favorite Four Star to contend with and he knows the current situation as well as the history of every country he will deal with during his time at CENTCOM.
It is clear from General Mattis’ testimony that he is a builder and not a destroyer as some would like to portray him. He is the kind of man who understands that war is won by both violence and diplomacy and he knows how to effectively employ both methods to win. If President Obama and our politicians give him the support he deserves, he will win in Afghanistan.
On to the bones of the hearing: most of the questions the senators asked were relevant. A couple of them took the opportunity to take a swing at President Obama which I felt was misplaced in such a venue. The comments, in my opinion, were on target but of course General Mattis can only advise the President, he cannot and would not control him, and I think our senators were watching my Fave to see how he would react to those questions. Well of course he was totally diplomatic and appropriate with his responses!
Now I want to talk a bit about Senator Lindsey Graham’s behavior in this hearing. He was adversarial and puerile. First he tried to get General Mattis to say just how 90,000 documents made it into the hands of Wikileaks. While that is current news, General Mattis has worked outside of the Pentagon for at least the last ten years, and I wonder if Graham wasn’t fishing to get my Fave to say something inappropriate regarding the incident. Second, has this guy been sleeping for the last 10 years? Did he miss all the coverage on this war being fought against insurgents, or maybe he doesn’t know what an insurgency is. (Note to me: Send Senator Lindsey Graham Mao’s book On Guerrilla Warfare.)
On top of Senator Graham’s seeming lack of knowledge regarding the kind of war we are fighting I found his mandate to General Mattis to get Europe to pony up more funds for the war exasperating. Shouldn’t that responsibility be left to diplomats and politicians, or maybe Senator Graham thinks this is one more job for the Marines because no one else can get it done. SENATOR GRAHAM – General Mattis will have enough to do running CENTCOM, perhaps you can put pressure on the people who are really supposed to work on Europe for funding instead of misplacing that responsibility on a top COMBATANT COMMANDER.
In fact, I found the same undertone in most of our senators’ questions, the expectation that General James N. Mattis should shoulder the responsibilities that belong to others: get funding from Europe, get the message across to Americans and allies that we are the good guys, find out how the Pentagon leaked 90,000 classified documents, and on and on.
Thank God my Favorite Four Star has some strong and broad shoulders! The world is a safer place with him at the helm of CENTCOM.
