Former Defense Secretary James Mattis on The David Rubenstein Show

[Music] you have any regrets about your decision to actually become a secretary defense I would tell you that if you're enjoying life and it's shortly after an election and the phone rings don't answer the phone obviously what do you think of the most important a security issues in terms of urgency it would be North Korea in terms of power it would be Russia and in terms of political will it would be China have you ever thought of running for office maybe president United States yourself you're a very bad man would you fix your time please well people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixable okay just leave it this way all right I [Music] don't consider myself a journalist and nobody else would consider myself a journalist I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though I have a day job running a private equity firm how do you define leadership what is it that makes somebody tick mad dog plays no games right most the people that I've interviewed in this series are people have known quite some time in the case of Jim mattis I had never met the man before because of his nickname mad dog I thought uh-oh I better be careful when I shake his hand he might be you know growling or mad at me or something like that but actually it was the opposite I recognized quickly that he has a certain reserve in a certain manner that would make person want to follow him as a leader in military and also I suspect that had he never gone into the military had had been in business or in politics he would have been successful there as well although I only spent this one hour with him an interview I really think that he's a person who has great potential again be a leader in our country and I don't think we've heard the last of Jim mattis you are minding your own business after having spent 40-plus years in the Marines mm-hmm you're out in your native state Washington and you get a call from Vice president-elect pence to come and meet Donald Trump who you had never met before what did you think that meeting was about and you have any regrets about going to the meeting or your decision to actually become secretary defense I don't live a life with regrets I would tell you that if you're enjoying life and it's shortly after an election and the phone rings don't answer the phone obviously but on a more serious note I was brought up by the greatest generation and I was brought up to believe that government service is an honor it's a privilege but it's a duty and whether the president United States asks you and they're a Republican or a Democrat it doesn't matter as long as you're prepared to do it as long as you know you can do it then the response is affirmative okay so you took the job but you resigned after a few years over the policy disagreement and he was regrets about having resigned well if you'll all understand ladies gentlemen these are the finest young Patriots in our country signing that blank check payable to all of us with their lives the men and women of our military and I loved being back around and said probably the best job I could have imagined and I only miss being around those people there just comes a time I don't live a life of regrets there come to time and you know what you've got to do so you don't never look back no I look forward I know I'm like Dallas okay I wish I could do that I always look back to the deals I should have done I miss them I wish I had that same ability but okay so you disagreed with President Trump on Syria and let me ask you I didn't realize you've been very very careful about not criticizing President Trump at all since you've left in any public forum so I'm not probably going to persuade you to do so here not that you want to do so but the reason that you want to be not commenting on your service as secretary or saying anything negative about President Trump is what is it because you're a former cabinet officer former military person or just generally I think it's not a good policy to do that I resigned over a policy disagreement you're right I put that disagreement in a page and a half letter the letter has been released that's all the more I need to say about it the French call it a dev wada Reserve a duty of reserve a duty of quiet you don't need to have a former Secretary of Defense talking about the current policies in a way that's injurious to the country and I would point out that secretary ash Carter my predecessor under the Obama administration said the same thing when he would respond to a congressional question that he considered political even while he was there so it's not unique to me as my point if not some protective effort around president Trump's you feel you know it's a years down the road you might feel about better about comment it's a good question David but like most of us in this room I'm from the West as well and there's something we call you ride for the brand and I can always come out and say on this policy or this strategy here's where I come down that's not men and a personal or political attack and I don't feel that I need to be silent about those things after that president leaves office but while the president's there the last thing we want to do is to have the former Secretary of Defense coming out saying I disagree with a certain policy guess what the president is still the commander-in-chief as elected by the American people and the troops have to obey them the last thing you want to do is have the troops well the former Secretary of Defense doesn't agree of that policy that's why I don't talk about it while they're in office so does President Trump call you for advice anymore or not so much you know the phone hasn't rang on that one day all right now you have recently come out with a book call sign chaos with a Bing West and it's a terrific book I highly recommend it so explain what call sign chaos means for those who haven't read the book what is chaos mean there so I was a colonel out in the Mojave Desert and I had an Operations Officer from Brooklyn with a rather droll sense of humor and one day I was dealing with another one of my brilliant ideas talking to my operations officer of this regimen of about 7,000 sailors and Marines out in the Mojave Desert and as I was walking I saw his white board chaos written I said what's that about and he said oh don't worry about that you don't even know about that and so oh yes I do so I I used some of my powers of persuasion I waterboarded him and I found out my irreverence subordinates had decided that that my call sign should be chaos Colonel has another outstanding suggestion it would rather tongue-in-cheek okay they didn't see the brilliance of all my ideas that I identified so I adopted that as my callsign and anytime you hear about this Mad Dog thing my troops all laughed at it no one my callsign was chaos that was never my favorite favorite nickname that the press assigned me on a slow news day well let's talk about that in this boy I'd rather know how to actually you actually never used the expression mad dog you know manis describe how you got that you obviously don't like it so you know I would think being mad dog shows you're tough and so forth why don't you like that and you don't ever use that name is that right well first the Marines teach you to be tough in other ways and self-aggrandizing stuff like that but I think too if you you know one thing I've had to do and and you'll understand yes to sign a lot of next to kin letters and last thing they needed to think there's someone with some you know self self-image of mad dog up there with their sons lives basically in his hands so I I shy away from those words but if I sign more than eight hundred of those letters I have so that must be the most difficult thing to do is to write the next akin that their their son or daughter's been killed mm-hmm it's difficult for me is nowhere near what the families go through so you have been very involved in meeting with gold star families since you've retired and that must be a very emotional experience to do that I think it's necessary that we pay our respects and we never forget the sacrifices of those families when you think this great big experiment that we have that you and I call America it's going to need to be defended and we're going to continue to need this sort of commitment this devotion to our country your first time in real combat is when Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait when you got into Kuwait relatively quickly were you surprised and out relatively speaking it was easy to get there it was a lot of training and a lot of fire support and it was I'm very proud of that that campaign because it's the last time I brought everyone home alive so when you started your life you started in the northwest Washington State and you were a great athlete or a great student or which would you say none of you above either okay but you know we're a little bit wild and you know would do things that today I would think parents wouldn't let kids do so when you were 13 years old your parents would let you hitchhike around the West is that right well I maintained a degree of silence about some of my activities around my parents but yeah I did start hitchhikers I think it was a more trusting nation in those days and my parents were a rather adventurous they weren't they weren't irresponsible and had they known some of this they probably would have put the kibosh on it so how did you actually come to the Marines did you say I'm going to be drafted I'd rather be in the Marines than the army or did you like my father my father went in the Marines and he said I like the uniform it's a great uniform I'm gonna go into the Marines what was it that appealed to you well one thing was I probably would have been drafted it was during that that that era there but it was almost it was a little bit unexamined it was more or less just assumed if you went in the military a lot of the guys in my neighborhood my older brother right then was in Vietnam as a Marine it was just kind of a natural thing it wasn't a very reflective or examined decision okay so you go into the Marines now what was your first assignment after you left officer training I was the best assignment I had in the military it was second lieutenant in the infantry you have about 40 sailors and Marines and there's nobody between you and your troops you live in the right amongst them you know them as well as you know your brothers you can spot them 200 yards away by their walk you know they are just they're just a great tight-knit crew okay so your first time in real combat is when Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and President Bush 41 decides that the United States is going to have a response now the 28 countries have no choice but to drive Saddam from Kuwait by force we will not fail what was your involvement and what did you do that war I commanded an infantry battalion I was in the 1st Marine Division and those of you remember the war you remember the big minefields and the trenches of oil and all that sort of stuff barbed wire and my battalion job was to open two of the routes through those those for the Marines to follow and did you think at the time there were predictions there would be tens of thousands of American troops killed did you when you got into Kuwait relatively quickly were you surprised and out relatively speaking it was easy to get there it was a lot of training and a lot of fire support and it was I'm very proud of that that campaign because it's the last time I brought everyone home alive thing yeah I was so right now you're an officer when that when an officer you get special treatment when you're in that kind of combat you sleep in the same places as the as the troops or you get a better place to sleep better food how do you treat your your troops in the in the infantry you always eat last you never live better than the troops matter of fact even when I was a two-star general we established what's called the level of comfort for a 23,000 man division as whatever an infantry Lance Corporal which is a very young troop has if he has nothing but uh but a blanket delay in then nobody has anything but a blanket except the wounded and the sick and those we do everything we can for but everybody lives like a lance corporal so that food that you eat MRE food is that really any good or not so great when you're in combat yeah let's just say it's not quite as good as the meal we had today yeah all right so eventually you get back into combat again because 9/11 occurs so your next assignment is to go into Afghanistan and to try to capture I assume Osama bin Laden is that right more or less so in the end you go over there you have all the troops and why did you not capture Osama bin Laden we had an admiral who'd read a lot of history and he said no one's held Kabul in 500 years they're gonna fall back on conda har their spiritual home and dig in can you get the Marines from the Mediterranean fleet and the Pacific Fleet together this three-star Admiral asked me I was a one-star and move against Conda hah I say yeah I can do that and so we got the troops in and then the intelligence agency said Osama bin Laden is in one of two valleys they were very sure this they had him pinpointed so I had a real quick computer study done and I knew which mountains on the Pakistan border if you put troops on on them could see each other and block the two valleys and then I was going to move my troops up the two valleys but I'd changed from Navy command and control to army command and control and I'd not spent the time getting to know my boss 900 miles away and we missed the opportunity and the the the the person who made the mistake was me for not I I just assumed because we're there to go out to this guy that everybody was attuned to the Intel he shouldn't make assumptions like that when you're when an organization is shifting and adapting they told you to pull back as well they didn't tell me to go we didn't pull back but we didn't we didn't go hey so openly you leave Afghanistan and you come back to the United States again right but then you are asked to go into another war in Iraq right so you get in there and then ultimately the fights between the Sunnis and the Shiites turned out to be much more than anybody anticipated as you look back on the political problems that arose in Iraq subsequent to Saddam Hussein having been captured what do you think was the mistake that was made or what could have been done better in hindsight mm-hmm yeah you know it's interesting to get the question look back in hindsight but let me tell you what it looked like in foresight where were in basically the summer very hot summer of 2000 what would it be three and Iraq has fallen and one of my briefs one day a young officer is briefing said by the way the enemy is picking this up that somehow we're gonna disband the Iraqi army we were just bringing the army the Iraqis back into their barracks we were starting to pay them we were trying to talk with them that we're not here to occupy or humiliate you you work for a jerk he's gone you're gonna be the new Iraqi army and I dismissed it as idle gossip and just said get that let's get on with the brief next day I walked in and everybody's quiet and this great big cavernous palace we'd taken over and the lieutenant down there has a piece of paper for me in three sentences it said the Iraqi army is hereby disbanded first lieutenant fresh out of his undergraduate day said general we just started an insurgency that's what it looked like and foresight didn't take hindsight to see the problem but ultimately when the insurgency occurred you were trying to at one point capture Fallujah among other things but you found there just wasn't enough political support to go and do the tough things that you thought the military needed to do is that right well we were we were we had a troop cap put on us so we didn't have enough troops for example I I was in responsible for an area about the size of North Carolina and I had about 15 16,000 troops to try to control it and just do the math on the geography you can see the problem then we had a four contractors who were misguided they drove into Fallujah without checking into the marine with the Marines who were in the area and these guys unfortunately drove into town right into the heart of town they were murdered by some of the tribes there by the terrorists and their bodies were desecrated I mean it was it was not pretty and we were ordered to go in I I said I've got a better idea we were told no after a couple days you will assault the city so we had to move the innocent people out and then go in after the terrorists and I didn't have many troops I could throw into the attack and I said okay we're going to do it but don't stop me now that we're going to do it mmm unfortunately they stopped this well we were deep in the city and house-to-house fighting so it's a very difficult time for the Marines would you go back in the government again are you you're done with government service I mean I grew up in a country that when the country calls do you do it you as being former Secretary of Defense in more than 40 years in the Marine Corps today what do you think are the one or two most important national security issues this country faces leaving aside whoever's president what do you think are the most important a security issues and challenges when I came into office I was working alongside a son of Texas Secretary Rex Tillerson and together we determined that we needed to rework the strategy in my case it was the national defense strategy and that strategy basically said we're going to have to continue to a deal with the terrorist threat it's an ambient threat it's just going to be out there but the primary threats to the country to go to your question David are clearly authoritarian regimes that are acting badly and in terms of urgency it would be North Korea in terms of power it would be Russia and in terms of political will it would be China we're going to have to address those so he wrote a strategy accordingly when do you think the United States will be able to if at all get out of Afghanistan with our military the point I would make is you can want to war over you can even declare a war over you can even order your troops home and then there's something the military says the enemy gets a vote so the idea that you can just declare the war over and say it's not going to be a bother to me anymore number one those problems don't stay over there and you're going to have to deal with world as it is not the way you want it to be would you say the same with respect to Iraq do you think Iraq is in a situation a situation where we don't have to worry about what's going on there or in Syria we have to be engaged everywhere in the world I think we need to intervene militarily with large forces less but it doesn't mean you can disengage the greatest generation came home from World War two and said it's a crummy world and whether you like it or not we're part of it so the bottom line is we're going to have to get together with our allies and stick together with our allies because we need every one of them right now and make certain we address these issues it doesn't mean we have to do it all ourselves but we're going to have to stick together have you ever thought of running for office maybe president United States yourself you're a very bad man because you don't want to do it or why wouldn't you be a perfect person to be a candidate at some day there are a lot of great Americans I have great confidence in the American people I've never lost that confidence we will find our way through rough patches and we'll have great leaders right so suppose somebody's elected president whoever's the next president president Trump or whoever might be the next president and that person calls you and says you know duty calls again can you come back and serve your country one more time would you go back into government again are you you're done with the government service well you can never say you're done because when the country calls I mean I grew up in a country that when the country calls you do it but I would tell you that I think it's also time for a lot younger people with fresh ideas good listeners they've got a they've got a steady history they've got a listen to those who've been there before but it's time for young people they're young compared to people running for president today you're still very young and I'm still at the top of my game David no all right so for somebody that is looking to you to say what are the attributes you think are the most important for somebody to be a leader what would you say those attributes are to be of an effective leader I followed George Washington's what his example of listen to others listen really well learn from them and then you help them and then you then you lead you don't you don't just start off yelling up people or telling them what to do and I think trust you've got to be able to build trust if you and build trust and you'll delegate decision authority down below and at that point you start winning because everybody feels like they own it they're making decisions you've made clear what you want but you've got to be able to build trust Trust is the coin of the realm that would be the the key thing can you build trust so you obviously have given your life to the country in this sense and you've committed enormous amount of your time in most of your life to this any regrets about not getting married having children none of that you if you had married do you think you could have done what you've done well I always had the idea I'm getting out of the Marine Corps next year and I'm going to get you know get me a dog gonna get married and live happily ever after I had my whole life plan for you young people in the audience I knew I was gonna I was gonna do my patriotic chore in the Marines for my 3 years that are gonna get out and go back to my hometown teach physics and and history in high school and coach football and go fishing I had it all figured out and then along comes life right but I always thought next year I'm getting out of the Marines so I never made a decision not to get married it just happened that way but I'm still looking if you get know anybody yeah well I think there'd be a pretty good catch pretty good catch sir for some people or anybody so if I was 17 or 18 year old and I wanted to go into the military why should I go into the Marines over the army or the Air Force or the Navy why would the Marines be better for me yeah I spent too many years fighting alongside soldiers living under air cover by the Air Force being carried on Navy ships I truly love all the services obviously you grow very fond of your own but I would just tell you that you after the military no matter which one you go into Coast Guard included here you come out with a from that formative experience with a much more sense of gratitude for everything you have in this country

Channel: David Rubenstein

Views: 160,306

Keywords: general, defense secretary, syria, secretary of defense, mad dog, white house, cabinent, trump cabinent, trump white house, marines, general mattis, james mattis

Id: RcwQRLuWsI4

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 07 2020