General Jim Mattis brings insight and clarity to the nature of war

a scholars scholar and a warriors warrior today on uncommon knowledge general james mattis usmc uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge i'm peter robinson a native of washington state james mattis enlisted in the united states marine corps in 1969 the year after he graduated from high school and served in rotc while he attended central washington state university by the time general mattis retired from the marine corps as a full general in 2013 he had commanded men in combat in iraq during the persian gulf war in afghanistan and in iraq once again during the iraq war he had also served as the nato supreme allied commander for transformation as commander of the united states joint forces command and as commander of the united states central command also known as centcom where general mattis was responsible for the middle east north africa and central asia general mattis is now a fellow at the hoover institution the think tank at stanford jim mattis welcome thank you i should state that you insist that i call you jim and not general i'll shine your shoes anytime you want and call you general but you insist on jim is it true that you always kept with you a copy of the meditations of marcus aurelius uh it is peter that one and quite a few other books actually so a roman emperor who died 18 centuries ago remained relevant to you as a commander in the united states marine corps in what way it was good for me to be reminded that i faced nothing new under the sun technology throws a few odd wrinkles in but the bottom line is the fundamental impulses the fundamental challenges and the solutions are pretty timeless in my line of work let me quote to you this is an email i found that you on a military website from that you wrote as you were preparing to deploy to iraq back in the early 2000s quote for all the intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed i must respectfully say not really alexander the great would not be in the least perplexed by the enemy we face right now what would alexander the great have seen in radical islam that he would have recognized when he was fighting in the same region back several thousand years ago he confronted basically in what looked like an implacable foe someone with a very different world view he was unconcerned in some ways about his own tactics he had confidence that he knew how his forces could act and their behavior on the battlefield what he was concerned with was how to understand this enemy and he would have found an enemy that even though it was not islam you know oriented in any way it was still a culture that looked at the world differently than his so he sought to understand it and as he understood it he understood how he would go after it so before committing to combat understand the enemy absolutely general you jim you testified we're taping this at the tail end of january earlier this very week you testified before the senate armed services committee under the new chairman fellow military man john mccain and instead of sitting there and telling the senators what you thought they ought to do you sat there and told them the questions that you thought they ought to ask and i'd like to take a few of the questions you proposed to john mccain and his colleagues and ask them of jim mattis quote here's the first when the decision is made to employ our forces in combat the committee should ask are the political objectives clearly defined and achievable explain that since world war ii we've entered probably five major conflicts uh four of those did not turn out well we went into them enthusiastically into korea into vietnam uh desert storm is an outlier and then we did afghanistan and iraq desert storm is the one that went well desert storm went well because it had very clearly defined political end state and if you look at the president emeritus of dartmouth university jim wright he wrote an article in the atlantic in july of 2013 and he said what did we learn from the korean war and basically what i drew from that was if you have murky or changing political end states then you don't know how to end that war and if you don't know how to end the war the war will go on and on the enemy will mutate and the american people will understandably lose under an appreciation for what it is they're fighting for because it's not well articulated so if you don't get the political end state right up front you're going to be engaged in a in a war you don't know how to end in favorable terms jim does that mean that president george h.w bush in the first uh gulf war was correct he came in for criticism for years afterwards and to some extent even today for not continuing all the way to baghdad and toppling saddam hussein was he correct to stop where he stopped he had said that the aim of the campaign was to drive iraq out of kuwait and once he had done that he stopped was that the right thing to do absolutely it was he clarified the political objective he drew together a worldwide coalition to support it we went in and we did it and then he did not allow mission creep he did not do what would have broken actually the political coalition which the military was simply the most forward part of so yes he was absolutely on target and that's why we were able to end that war in a very uh few number of days once that fighting started so second iraq war we invaded in 2003 and for three weeks everything goes beautifully we advance north opposition melting away and at the end of three weeks saddam hussein and his regime were gone and then for roughly four years until president george w bush the younger president bush instituted the surge we changed tactics we added troops but there's a period between those first four weeks and the surge of some four years when things just go sideways how does a military man understand how do you think about what went wrong right first the attack did go very well for the first three weeks in the conventional terms although i assure you it wasn't that swimmingly smooth for the lads on the front lines it's just something to remember but what happens at that point is it's revealed that we don't have a clearly stated political end state and now we start wondering we're in search of a political end state so strategies which are where you connect those means to achieving the political end state now have got to start accommodating uncertainty uncertainty is sufficient on a battlefield to cause any strategy headaches but it's absolutely impossible if you haven't figured out on your own part what you want to inten what you intend to do so if you haven't got that part figured out you have no constant objective that you're aiming towards and now you start wandering on the battlefield you start wandering intellectually and what is what is in the american system good military men take it as a kind of sacred matter that they defer ultimately to the civilian authority but you've just said in four engagements out of five major engagements since the second world war i think one of these are my words you would never put it this way but one of the things you're saying is the civilians screwed up they did not give the professionals clearly defined objectives when the professionals find the civilians failing to provide clear objectives what is the professional's duty well the duty for generals for admirals is to press to try and get clearly stated political objectives in our in our form of government the military is subordinate to the civilian leadership the commander-in-chief is elected by the american people i was never elected by the american people i was promoted with the consent of the u.s senate that's not the same as being elected so i believe the role for the senior military officers is to be heard they should insist on being heard they must never insist on being obeyed in our form of government but as they insist on being heard they have to try to do this carry out this national dialogue without creating an adversarial relationships with the political leadership try to avoid that and what you want to do is hard well it is hard but what i learned over many years is something that secretary bob gates made very clear in some of his writing and that is at the highest levels it all depends on personal relationships and so you've got to try to maintain your best military advice without without creating any kind of animosity at that level it is hard you just have to keep working at it and try to walk a mile in their shoes as you try to close the gap between the appreciation the military has for the situation and the and as it's seen by the political leadership and this is this is not unique to our times today we had the same challenges between fdr and general marshall uh in world war ii and certainly abe lincoln had challenges with his generals so this is just part of maintaining a a government of the people by the people and for the people that needs military defenders but at the same time it does not exist for a military purpose afghanistan two quotations on afghanistan here's one president barack obama on december 28th of last year for more than 13 years our nation has been at war in afghanistan now our combat mission is ending and the longest war in american history is coming to a responsible conclusion close quote quotation 2. this is jim mattis testifying to the senate armed services committee a few days ago gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in afghanistan are reversible we may not want this fight but the barbarity of an enemy that kills women and children and has refused to break with al qaeda needs to be fought close quote in your view we're not done in afghanistan is that right peter in in my line of work the enemy gets a vote is the way we put it you may want a war over you may declare it over the enemy may not agree and you have to deal with that that reality we have irreconcilable differences with the taliban secretary clinton when she was secretary of state gave three conditions for the taliban to be brought back inside the body politic of afghanistan one break with al qaeda two quit killing people stop using violence and three obey the afghan constitution they have refused that very low bar that would have allowed them to step over and come over to bringing their political ideas forward to see if the afghan people would buy into them the reason they don't do it the reason they use bombs instead of going to the ballot box because they know the afghan people will not buy into it so they will continue to support al qaeda they will continue to do this kind of terrorism that they conduct over there every day and as they do that for us to declare arbitrarily that the war is over uh may not match the reality on the ground all right you've raised in uh in kind of a bleak way but you've raised a point when you're in uniform you insist on being heard not you personally but a leader of military professionals insist on being heard but never insists on being obeyed now that you're out of uniform you're you you spoke very eloquently and very carefully but you didn't say a word against president obama even though i gave you a big fat opportunity to do so by quoting him you testified to the senate arms services committee and again you were very careful not to attack the president directly you view your duty right now as describing this what do you how do you see your duty you know a lot you love your country you understand the military and you draw different conclusions from the administration but you're but you're being careful about what you say well i'm not too careful i've gotten in some trouble over the years uh so i'm not too careful about it but i i'm basically saying the same thing that i said in private meetings and even in public meetings back when i was on active duty the bottom line i think here is that i owe my best military advice and at times it's uncomfortable for a democracy that believes in in freedom and it believes in peace and prosperity uh the idea that this level of evil can exist uh is incompatible with our with our view of what we would like to see is we turn over this world to our children but i'm also convinced having dealt with this enemy since 1979 which is the first time i sailed into those waters on u.s navy ships that we're up against an enemy that means what they say and we should not patronize them when they say girls don't go to school you're not going to talk them out of it by simply having a picnic in the backyard and resolving your differences their views of the role of women their views of modernity their views of tolerance for people who think differently are fundamentally different than ours and oliver wendell holmes jr made very clear that between two irreconcilable world views it's probably going to turn to a fight and that's what we're in right now whether we want it to be over or not and in regards to the president loyalty i was 40 odd years a naval officer and loyalty i learned only counts when there's 100 reasons not to be and i would just tell you that the president had a tough enough year and he doesn't need generals coming out now and characterizing him in negative terms we we owe the country we owe the president our best advice but i i don't choose to take part in in going beyond that and characterizing people's motives or or their performance is unsatisfactory we're all trying to make sense of this world got it another of your questions to the senate which i'm now going to put to you quote i'm quoting you jim as president eisenhower noted the foundation of our military strength is economic strength no nation in history has maintained its military power if it failed to keep its fiscal house in order how do you this is you talking to the senators how do you halt the damage caused by sequestration close quote sequestration this is the budget sequester of 2013 when republicans and democrats in congress could not agree on what needed to be cut so they set up a few automatic cuts the idea was that the automatic cuts were so draconian they would force them to get together they never did get together and the sequest sequestration has taken place cut the defense budget by about six percent in 2013 cut it again last year and president obama has now projected that he's going to propose spending on the defense department something like six percent over sequester okay so we end up with the pentagon budget we'll note who knows where it's going to come out but it's going to be about 500 billion dollars to 530 if you if the president gets exactly what he seems to be proposing is that enough well i don't know if it's enough but i know one thing for certain if you want to cut the defense budget you should do it wisely and reducing your strategic end your political aims make certain that you don't have a policy that requires a military that's larger than what you're willing to fund the way we're doing it right now is we're doing it with arithmetic now let's put it in terms of a family budget if if if a cut comes to your income and you say you have to take a ten percent cut uh in in your in your family's budget you don't cut vacations ten percent food ten percent life insurance ten percent rent ten percent you may cut out all your vacations or your restaurant meals and you wisely take that into account what we're doing right now is we're doing these salami cuts of everything and the result is you have a mindless application of our money in many cases going to priorities that no one agrees should be funded so this is just silly the engine for our national security has always been our economy and whether you look back at the roman empire or you look at the spanish empire or the british empire no country the soviet union no country has maintained its military strength if it did not maintain its fiscal house and good order and right now we are spending so irresponsibly we're going to turn over to the younger generation an injurious taxation and most of the money that we will be spending which is by the way more within a couple years servicing our debt right than we spend on the department of defense we'll be going to riyadh moscow beijing and tokyo not all those countries are friends and we are put we are borrowing borrowing money from them and we're borrowing they they are holding our paper right and we're going to be sending them money and the young people were growing up today when you and i grew up if we had a good idea we could always find someone to fund us and come in we're sitting here in silicon valley as we speak right now in the future that money may not be available because of the irresponsibility of the current uh government basically and us we we've got to look at ourselves on this that we're allowing this irresponsible spending that's going to burden the younger generation jim one more question on spending i fumbled away 500 billion or 534 bills six percent the numbers are mind-boggling yeah how do you as a professional say to an a layman an ordinary marriage this the notion would be those numbers are so huge it's hard to understand what they mean and anybody who reads a memoir or two about the pentagon understands that it's a gigantic operation in many ways it's bureaucratic there are all kinds of rivalries inter-service rivalries in trust service rivalries taking place how can an american an ordinary american who can't begin to go through all the detail how can you have any confidence that the pentagon budget how do you know the pentagon budget is right dwight eisenhower said our military strength rests on our economic strength but in his farewell address he also warned about the military-industrial complex those contractors who are going to lobby congressmen for contract how do you know that it's being done right well it's hard it's hard and we can always find in a budget this large we can find things that are waste or we can find things that in all likelihood we don't need in a military budget the challenge is how do you set up the processes to audit it to govern it to allocate those those resources in a responsible manner and what i've found over many years in many different organizations if you take good people and good ideas and you match them with bad processes the bad processes will win 9 out of 10 times right now the processes have become so convoluted the laws are so complex governing acquisition the budgets themselves are so detailed in some areas directing things that even the military we don't ask for frankly that you can't really get the good ideas forward and have them governing all aspects of the budget now this is normal this is not something where all of a sudden one day we're going to find the holy grail and say presto we know how to how to solve this but we've got to work this in a manner that creates processes that return integrity to the managerial integrity to the system we know what to do with corruption i mean we put people in jail for that sort of thing this is not about corruption this is about using the resources wisely the american people have given us and you're right it's become so big it's hard really to uh to calculate that another of your questions for the senate armed services committee that i'm turning on you is the u.s military being developed to fight across the full spectrum of combat our forces must be capable of missions from nuclear deterrence to counter insurgency and everything in between now including the pervasive cyber domain let me just take you around the world do you believe we now have the proper spectrum of forces in place to deal with a rising china well in light of china's bullying in the south china sea i don't think we're building enough ships i think we are going to be forced as we pull more of our forces home from overseas from the cold war days and that was appropriate we bring them home but we're going to be forced into a more naval strategy as far as the military strategy for america as a result we're going to have to look at what we're doing and we may have to give the navy a bigger slice of the budget in order to carry out the kind of operations that reassure our friends and temper our adversaries designs i mean it's all well and good we're trying to get along with china and i i completely endorse that i don't think china sees any value to going to war with the united states but at the same time there are a lot of nations out in that region that would like to see more u.s navies making pork calls in their harbors from vietnam to the philippines from malaysia to taiwan and japan and if you don't have enough ships then you're going to have a hard time doing that and sometimes in this world the best ambassador you can have is a man of war so we're going to have to look at this to make certain we're making a military fit for its time it's the bottom line iran oh yes do we have the spectrum in place to deal with iran yes obviously it would take more forces if we had to go with a military option for iran which the president has not taken off the table but yes we we can handle iran you're comp you're comfortable with that one i have no doubt all right you know thank you because i will sleep better tonight at least with regard to iran well remember war now peter is fundamentally an unpredictable phenomenon so i'm not saying that it would be carefree i'm not saying we can be careless and it would be bloody awful it would be a catastrophe if we have to have another war in the middle east like that but could we handle it from a military point of view absolutely isil the islamic state of iraq and the levant 2014 june 2014 isil declares itself a worldwide caliphate it has attracted thousands of combatants from the united from europe and from the united states it now controls about half of syria and about a third of iraq that may be a little less today because the kurds announced that they they're moving in but it they've got a lot of territory and they're carrying out you spoke earlier about the barbarity of the taliban the isil are carrying out they've carried out thousands of executions of religious and political opponent and these are these include beheadings and crucifixions do we have the proper spectrum of forces in place to deal with isil well we have the forces available the military forces available they're not in place but that reflects the political decision the question is do we have the political will to deal with isil in an intelligent and effective manner they had to put this they they're an organization that are a little bit like lebanese hezbollah uh in terms of trying to create social services they're a lot like al qaeda operationally but or philosophically but operationally they're like al-qaeda on steroids and when you put that together they're they're a uniquely capable organization but the fact is they couldn't last two minutes in a fight with uh with our troops and so it's it comes down to having a good strategy it comes down to a political situation in baghdad that draws sunnis and kurds and shia together and i think that the new prime minister has has done some things in the right direction on that but it also comes down to making certain that we know what it is not only what we fight for in this world but what we will not tolerate and the kind of assassinations the mass killings the the mass rapes that are going on there this is a group that deserves no no support from anyone and we should try to shut down its recruiting shutdown its finances and then work to fight battles of annihilation not attrition but annihilation against them so the first time they meet the forces that we put against them there should be basically no survivors they should learn that we can be even tougher than them except for the ones who surrender obviously we don't kill prisoners but if they want to fight uh they should pay a heck of a price for what they've done to innocent people out there okay jim now here's another i'm going to put myself in your hands as a layman and just ask you to explain to me how to think of the kind of conflict you just described and here's what i'm here's what i mean this goes back to your first question clear definition objectives end state uh you mentioned five engagements since the second world war let me mention well so the second world war we knew whom we had to beat imperial japan needed to surrender and nazi germany needed to surrender and runstats signed a document of surrender and the japanese sent representatives to the uss missouri and they signed in front of macarthur it ended we knew who they were we knew where they were and we knew how to take them on cold war the soviet union on december 25th 1991 ceases to exist isil has territory that's one i could sort of okay that to that extent i understand we they can't end up controlling that territory but if you think in terms of the conflict with radical islam you've got isil the taliban al-qaeda seems to have franchise operations almost like mcdonald's they're in yemen and elsewhere we've got places i didn't even i'd never heard of boko haram in nigeria until a couple of months ago turns out they've been there for quite a while yesterday's newspaper there was an uh an attack in the sinai in which some 20 egyptians work so activity is taking place against gen president sisi if i'm pronouncing it correctly in egypt and this is 13 years after 9 11. so layman robinson says this this this is like this is metastasis or cancer is let's not let's not be melodramatic just as a it's like the the the kids toy you push it down here and it pops up there how do we how do we how do we fight a phenomenon radical islam as opposed to a state well the problem with islam goes back to the days of the prophet when he dies and it splits into two halves and at that point they they've got an internal war that's kept kept waxing and waning over the years between the sunni and the between the sunni and the shia and then the first time that i think i could find jihad in our presidential papers is with thomas jefferson and for the marine corps we got to the shores of tripoli in our song from that campaign so no this is not this is not new and it has gone on for a long time obviously it's in a waxing phase it's getting stronger i think the first question you have to ask is as you try to make sense out of all this is political islam in our best interests and let me define political islam from the sunni side it would be the muslim brothers in cairo for a year after the the arab spring put them in power or in tehran with the shia side his uh is political islam is practiced in tehran in our best interest no neither that is the answer neither one oh yeah i defer to the american people if that is what uh you think then what is our effort how should our effort look to support the countervailing forces you brought up general al sissi now president al sissi yes he went out to al-azhar university the oldest most famous university in all of the arab lands on january 1st i think it was and he said that there has got to be a change in thinking and the clerics need to lead that that there's something wrong with islam when the whole world is starting to see it as a murderous religion he says i'm not talking about changing the religion i'm talking about changing the thinking if you go to mohammed bin zayed the crown prince in united arab emirates he believes that you've got to have a modern state and that political islam has no role in governance obviously each person's morality and their their relationship with their god guides them but it's not the government it doesn't guide the government the government is guided by men no theocracy no sharia law you go to the king of jordan who believes in moderate islam you go to any number of people out there who will fight alongside us i've fought many times in the middle east i never fought in an all-american formation i always had arabs beside me i always had muslims beside me and i bring this up because when we ask those fundamental questions and we recognize the reality of today's challenges it will lead us to certain behavior like taking our own side in the fight and supporting the people i just mentioned rather than confusing them and so we're going to have to look at this because back in the 1980s 1983 the lebanese hezbollah the iranian-inspired militias declared war basically on the united states they blew up our embassy in beirut they attacked the french paratrooper barracks attacked the u.s marine barracks and they've killed americans many times since they tried to kill ambassador otto the saudi ambassador to washington d.c two miles from the white house here two years ago and that was the decision taken at the highest levels in tehran and we have done nothing about it that side of the the insurgency the terrorism the violent jihadist extremist terrorists has not been touched by the americans at the same time al qaeda declares war on us in the 1990s they try to bring the trade towers down they succeed the second time they attack the uss coal they blow up two of our embassies in east africa and though that organization we have shredded their senior leadership but you're right it is franchised it's al-shabaab in somalia it's aqap al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula in yemen now of course we've got isis there's boko haram and i can go on and so bottom line is you have to recognize the historic roots and you've got to go after it by supporting the countervailing forces and creating the worldwide alliance like we did in world war ii based on the clarity of defining the problem remember einstein said if given one hour to save the world i'd spend 55 minutes composing my thoughts on what the problem is and i'd save the world in five minutes we're going to have to put in the intellectual thinking to figure out what it is that we defend and more importantly what we will not tolerate in the world jim that amounts to a call for new seriousness on the part of the civilian leaders is that not correct and military guided by our intelligence services that actually have done a very good job outlining what this enemy looks like all right a couple of final questions the movie american sniper has reopened a debate about the cost of war especially of course on the on those who volunteer for the forces and do the actual fighting here's a recent quotation from you you spoke at a veterans group not too long ago quote although this is before the movie opened still you're addressing the issues that the movies raised quote i would just say there is one misperception of our veterans and that is they are somehow damaged goods i don't buy it there is also something called post traumatic growth explain what you mean anyone who goes to war well let me let me change that going to war is one thing you can deploy to a dangerous wartime situation without being in combat an awful lot of people are in support jobs but for those who close in on the enemy who seek out close with to kill the enemy it is a very atavistic primitive environment and there is post-traumatic stress for anyone who's been through it there is stress no doubt about it you grant that absolutely in fact you insist on it well it's not an insignificant moment peter the first time you draw down and you shoot your fellow man that's all there is to it or you see your buddy hit next to you so the bottom line there's going to be stress but it does not have to be post-traumatic disorder or or syndrome or you don't have to come at it from a position of illness you can come at it from a position of wellness from a position of growth as a human being i've seen people come out of this sort of thing uh better better men better husbands better fathers more in touch with their god or whatever their source of spiritual strength is uh kinder uh more compassionate now there was a civil war general uh named chamberlain who rose to be the president of bowdoin college in maine and he said combat makes good men better and bad men worse so there is the reality that not uh not everyone reacts the same way but i don't buy that somehow if you came home from iwo jima or gettysburg or iraq or afghanistan that somehow you're you're limited in what you can do the greatest generation came home from world war ii the worst war in world history and they created good communities they rose to be college presidents start industries that created wealth for the for the working man uh i i just don't buy that somehow that we're uh handicapped because we've been in those circumstances i recognize the grim realities i don't recognize the limited potential of the human being when they come out of that jim last question although you retired with four stars you joined the marine corps as a kid you were 19 years old 18 actually 18 sorry all right and uh so here's the question what would you say to an 18 year old today when you joined up the united states was self-confident enough to be engaged in and ultimately to win a 45-year-old 45-year conflict the cold war there are questions about how self-confident the country is today we face this complicated new enemy this new set of circumstances and conditions and at the same time the private economy has produced opportunities for 18 and 19 year old kids that they didn't face when you were a kid up in washington the farm country up in washington state what would you say what would you say to a kid in your circumstances up in washington state or maybe somebody here at stanford university who's considering the rotc program about why a career in the armed forces of the united states would still be a worthwhile to spend 20 or more years of your life well i think what you want want to do is explain that there comes a point in your life when you want to know that you serve for a purpose in this world and there's a gravestone up in cyprus hills cemetery in new york with a guy that we all loved when we were kids growing up he was a sparkling baseball player we all wanted to be jackie robinson and if you go to that grave today it says a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives that would and he wrote his own epitaph by the way i think that when you look at this experiment we call america we should not look at the people who founded it as if they had an easy time of it and they are now just faces on dollar bills we should not look at this as something that is just automatically our inheritance we're going to have to work for it and at times we're going to have to fight for it because we might have been born here most of us by complete accident good fortune we lived here by choice but we have an obligation to turn this free country over to young men and women with the same freedoms that we got when we grew up in it and if you want to be part of something that keeps you from sitting in a psychiatrist chair when you're 45 on what you do with your life you can't go wrong than going up then joining up the army of the navy air force coast guard marine corps it's been in four years and if you like it you stick around for longer frankly i disliked many of the jobs i had as a marine i grew to hate minefields when i was a 21 year old infantry lieutenant but i also grew to love being around guys who'd crawl willingly into minefields alongside you and so i i i just recommend if you want to get far from the well-lit avenues of life and go test yourself in the toughest circumstance alongside the best people in the world you'll never regret serving the us military general james mattis united states marine corps thank you for the hoover institution and the wall street journal i'm peter robinson you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 395,290

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Keywords: Mattis, war, uncommon knowledge, Robinson, military, ROTC, ISIL, Afghanistan, PTSD, General James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, DOD

Id: tKIJKQRb53o

Length: 40min 55sec (2455 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2015