Reflections with General James Mattis - Conversations with History

this program is presented by university of california television like what you learn visit our website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest UC TV programs welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies our guest today is James Madison Annenberg fellow at the Hoover Institution and a retired United States Marine Corps general who last served as the 11th commander of US Central Command he is on the Berkeley campus this week as the Chester Nimitz memorial professor general mattis welcome to Berkeley thank you pleasure to be here where were you born and raised I was born up in the Pacific Northwest and I was raised on the banks of the Columbia River in a little town up there had a combination of agricultural pursuits and nuclear industries so it was a kind of a Tale of Two Cities and and looking back how do you think your parents shape your thinking of them about the world they had enormous impact on me they had both travelled around the world my father had been a merchant mariner my mother had served overseas in South Africa with Army Intelligence in World War two and they introduced us to a world full of great ideas and not a fearful place but a place to go enjoy and probably the most important thing was they never bought a television but we had a great big library and so the ideas that were there we were encouraged to explore and and it shaped my view of learning and is that when you became a lifetime learner and a reader of books in addition to being later a warrior I certainly had a big impact I think I was pretty focused on things I enjoyed like geology the American West Cowboys Indians that sort of thing but eventually when I got into a profession and certainly I knew where I could go for good ideas where were you educated in in Washington yeah public schools growing up I went to Central Washington State College for a little over three years and then I went off into the Marines and when did you decide to become a professional soldier was that an inevitable result of your background no I'd been interested in the marine since a young age my older brother was in Vietnam when I enlisted into the reserves the Officer Candidate course in particular and I don't think I had the intention of making it a career at that point I wasn't closed-minded about it but it was to go in and and do my time in those days we had the draft there was little choice and then look around see what else was out there I like to ask my guess about the skills and temperaments involved in in your profession so the first thing I want to ask you along that line of questioning is what do you see as the skillset and temperament that are really important for a marine underneath it's rather prussian exterior we expect people who are very curious they have got to have a curiosity about life that will carry them beyond any kind of institutional learning the Marines enjoy having people who are somewhat Mavericks frankly they protect them and they find many times at that sort of independent thinking is a big help to our Corps and its mission which has been heavily into the small wars and the minor interventions hope we can always fight the bigger Wars but you have to be ready to fight in any climber place and in that regard there's nothing new really Under the Sun you can always find a history book somewhere that can guide you so there's a strong bent towards intellectual rigor and a historical appreciation of where we're at today obviously if there's Fitness Marine officers are expected to be at the top of their game and then there's another aspect whether you call it spiritual or emotional or psychological where you actually see your attitude as a weapon when you go into tough times and that transmits down through your ranks so it's a combination of the mental of the physical and the spiritual or as Confucius would put it body mind and spirit one of the themes that I identified in your career as as a general and as a soldier is learning a real commitment to to learning through time so what you know today may not be the most useful thing in your new situation talk a little about that because you're suggesting that your soldiers have to have that also yes I joined the Marine Corps where the Commandant of the Marine Corps has his own reading list mmm and all Marines at the rank of private will read these three or four books plus there's a couple of other additional ones if they're interesting every corporal reads a different set sergeants of different lieutenants majors generals have their own reading list when they make general they're not allowed just to fall back on what they already know they have to read a different set of books so as a Marine Corps that in a very accountable way very abrupt way frankly I've been under commanders and executive officers who if you didn't do your reading you spent the weekend reading the book and reporting to them on Monday morning so there was a an institutional expectation that you would continue to learn and frankly over many many years I can for the younger officers who might view this lecture tell them how they can become four-star generals they can fight enemies who are dumber than a bucket full of rocks and those are generally enemies who have not had the same rigor in pressing themselves to learn from history and to be curious about the world around them so as a Marine Corps that had that expectation and the Marine Corps rewarded you institutionally with promotion with certain plum assignments if you did that kind of reading you in one of your talks that I heard you you emphasized the the qualities of humanity in other words that you say at one point you know it's good to have a sense of humor as a marine talk a little about that because it's not what we normally think about obviously there has to be a sense of purpose but but but but that that keeping in touch with your humanity is important well I'm here on this campus for the nimitz lecture series and i would just tell you in studying him in preparation for this it was very clear that as difficult as his task was to take over the war in the pacific with the pacific fleet on the bottom of pearl harbor pretty much he never lost sight of the fact there were human beings on both sides of that war he did his duty he dealt very strong blows against the imperial japanese navy and army but he never forgot there were human beings on both sides and the task is so grim and I'm a marine infantry officer we're people who close with and destroy the enemy and what we can call intimate killing you cannot go into something like that not be changed so at times a sense of humor is almost like body armor on your body this is armor around your spirit as you keep your spirit from going so grim with some of these situations that it actually deals damage to your spirit I think too that when you look at this sort of this sort of aspect the only way you can return you men and again I was in the infantry and the infant is known as infantry infant soldier a young soldier the only way you can return them to civilian society as better citizens is to make certain you don't allow the grim aspects to basically define them they've got to be able to do very bad things without becoming bad or evil in the process that is a tough line and it takes constant nurturing of the young men who oftentimes are so young you're in a role of local parentis you're acting really is their parent now let's talk about leadership in the essential elements to that now you've had a extraordinary career in terms of different roles so so first off what what is your philosophy of of command really well it's a great story the Marine Corps actually attracts certain kinds of young people from our society so there's there's the aspect of who joins the Marine Corps there are many people who would never consider it and I understand that respect that and actually the Marine Corps encourages people who don't think that's the right place for them not to come in because you need people in this kind of a situation who really want to be there because they are going to the veneer of civilization I'll put it this way is going to get rubbed off them and leave their character revealed and if they cannot keep their sense of chivalry around innocent people who are caught up on a battlefield if they can't keep a sense of who they are then any leadership they adopt is a mimicking of something else that's not really them so we want to attract people who have an ethical sense and then the very tough-minded NCOs called drill instructors are going to make Marines out of them in that regard the Marine courts view of leadership is very very simple that you have a father-son teacher-scholar relationship it is to be really coaching more than commanding and how does that equate to the reality of the jobs when I was a division commander with 25,000 sailors and Marines and I could probably do the commanding aspects of the job in 10 to 15 minutes a day there are other 23 hours and 45 minutes was spent on coaching young people who came of their own free will want to do a good job and you're trying to set the conditions father/son teacher-scholar so that they can be successful there's a quote that I think I have here if I can find it you're talking about leadership and and you you make the point that the importance of conveying your intent which is is consist with what you just said so so it's it's almost as if you need to say very little and rely a lot on this mentoring role that you just talked about what I found Harry was that the more time I spent thinking about my intent and succinctly describing what I wanted to have happen the less time I had to give orders and commands during the fight they knew what to do I remember on one occasion fighting for three days and I don't think I gave the half-a-dozen orders over three days and I had 12 hundred and fifty Arabs sailors and Marines under my command so I think as we as we look at how we explain our intent that is how you unleash the initiative and aggressiveness of young Americans who want to do the right thing they've got a good ethical sense and you allow them to use their initiative rather than becoming some kind of Prussian everybody has to have permission to do anything so I'd spend a lot of time on commander's intent and I realized as a second lieutenant that probably my men didn't lay awake all night thinking how am I going to mess up lieutenant Madison's day tomorrow they were trying to do the right thing so my job was to make sure they knew what the right thing was to do and then unleash them and when they make mistakes understand the difference between a mistake where they were trying their best with the information they had at their age many times are very young men but there's a dent in a mistake and a lack of discipline and the Marine Corps is very abrupt and account holding people accountable for a lack of discipline they are accountable for it they're not victims they will act and behave like US Marines so was this discrimination between a mistake and a lack of discipline coupled with a sense that I owed them the best possible articulation of what my interests were what my vision was what my commander's intent was so so it sounds like the the preparation to convey intent is is hard work on your part because you you've really got to think about the words you're going to use and make it a learning experience for them as you yourself do this hard work you know Harry I met once with General Colin Powell on actually on more than one occasion he was a wonderful mentor and if I had problems bothering me I could always call him or when I saw him ask for some wisdom which he was always eager to share and he told me that he had sat for quite some time as he thought about how he was going to explain to the American people what we were going to do about the Iraqi army and Kuwait when we attacked and eventually he came up with the words we are going to cut off the head and destroy it to this day many people remember that one sentence he didn't spend a long time on a strategic rationale and the operational pauses that would accompany the various operational missions he gave a very succinct description of what was going to happen really that's an example obviously put in military terms not civilian terms for how you deal with a lot of time spent thinking about the strategic or the larger purpose and then leave delegate to the young people the opportunities to exercise their initiative at the lowest level this is fascinating because in your role as a general you have different audiences and when when you're head of cement Central Command you you even have more people who you have to talk differently to and I think it's fair to say you are known for what is taken as statements they're very outspoken yeah and but but what you're suggesting here is that's an important element in communicating with the people under you and and where as a different audience might read into what you're saying very different things it's gotten me cross wired with people at times but it never caused me to apologize to take it back I never changed my style when asked once where do you think you get the right to speak like that I said last time I checked it was in the US Constitution the Bill of Rights and I'm in the Marine Corps but I'm not just in the Marines I'm in the US Marines and I consider myself a US citizen obviously I never tried to upset anyone it wasn't my goal to do that it was to convey a purpose but at the same time I never thought I had to patronize young men who were 18 and act like they couldn't understand something and generally I tried to speak in a way to my Admirals and Generals when eventually I had dozens of them under my command the same way I spoke to the others who were more junior in rank and experience in age of course but but it was designed for whatever audience I was speaking to but it should resonate through all those ranks and I had an army general when I made Colonel who pulled me aside and told me something that really affected me he said you have always up until now as a battalion commander a company commander platoon commander you've been able to know your men personally he said you've known your sailors and Marines you know their names you see their walk you can tell who they are at 50 meters away he said now you're going to executive leadership and your leadership is going to be filtered down through different people he said you're going to have to make even more clear what your intent is you're going to have to go to the Graduate School now for this otherwise what you've done all along and were able to reinforce with your knowledge of individuals will no longer be applicable and so I kind of put myself back to school and read how generals in history have conveyed their intent admirals in history and it was a big help you you have said that in our time unfortunately there is a separation between patriotism and liberalism meaning a kind of an understanding of Western civilization so so that is something you also have to convey not only to the broader public but also to your soldiers that they're there there is a an important element of knowing the tradition that they come out of that it's broader than the mill - yes going back to the 1960 to 1975 timeframe there was a disenchantment among many people in the country and you know we ended up in Vietnam and it does tore the society apart in terms of trust of each other John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson I'm sure had the best of intentions democrat president democrat party president when Nixon got in he was confronted with a war that the American people had basically grown very disappointed in and the country was in the process of holding against its military many of whom were draftees of holding it against the political what they thought was the right wing I I think to some degree unwilling to look at the fact that was the political left that had put us into the war but I don't think it's ever been patched up now I will tell you that among young people today they are very non ideological and they don't buy into it they draw their own conclusions and they may agree or disagree with things but it's not based on what happened in those days I think that that divorce between liberalism and patriotism has never been patched up but jumping forward to today I would tell you that I have lance corporals who can articulate the nobility of the wars we are in today better than the spokesman in Washington DC the ideas that grew out of the Enlightenment they were given voice in our country and our Declaration of Independence our Constitution our Bill of Rights those are worth defending and I've dealt with this enemy since 1979 and I don't patronize them when they say girls don't go to school they mean it you're not going to have a barbecue and talk them out of their position they didn't arrive there rationally they will not be rationally removed from that position when you find people to say you will pray you will go to this mosque and by the way if you don't go to this mosque you go to that one we're going to kill you well these are irreconcilable differences and so somehow we have to be able to articulate this understand this and be able to explain the nobility of it and I think really since Tony Claire left office as the Prime Minister in the United Kingdom we've had no Western political leader who has been able to address in a compelling persuasive way for example what FDR was able to convey when we went into World War two I mean here our fleet was laying on the bottom of Pearl Harbor Admiral Nimitz was on his way to take over a shattered military the army would surrender and in the Philippines and at that point the American people are very focused on the Japanese in FDR said no we're not going after the Japanese first we're going after Hill or first how did he change the American people to do it he was persuasive he brought Frank Capra out of California a movie director put an army uniform on him said you're going to make movies that every single young American in basic training in the Army Navy Marine Corps they're all going to watch him and they're going to understand why we fight we've done none of that in this in this fight so far so we've got a problem that divorce is still real mostly it's with old guys I find it's the unspoken elephant in the room with people my age who were able to dodge out of the draft something like that who still think it matters it doesn't matter to me I'm more interested in their views today but to some of them I think it does still matter and there's a sense of their manhood is in question I think it's more of a self-consciousness than anything that we feel another audience that you have to address is the the political elite in the country whether in the Congress or in the executive branch talk a little about the challenges of doing that in making points like you just made well you the first point I would make is you try to avoid any adversarial relationship I have I give the best military advice I can come up with but I have to understand the president's portfolio is broader than mine so he may or may not take what I expect and and I've never been shy with this is that I would get a hearing I sign a lot of next to Kin letters I have sent a lot of troops into fights and it is critical that we tell our civilian leaders what we think we can or more importantly at times what we cannot do with a military instrument especially as we get more and more political leaders who've had no military experience some can have exaggerated views of what the military can do some can have unrealistic views in in any number of ways so what you do is you try to create no adversarial relationships no antagonism but you give blunt military advice I expect to be heard I don't expect to be obeyed I wasn't elected but at the same time I do not mince words and I don't I consider it part of respect for our political system now will that at times cause people concern will it get general Shinseki when he says that he that an invasion of Iraq will take hundreds of thousands more troops than than what the political leadership wanted to admit to at the time yes in general Shinseki was marginalized as a result Lieutenant General newbold the operations officer for the Joint Staff questioned the wisdom of going into Iraq he was supposed to be promoted to four stars he was sent home as a three-star so are there other institutional penalties for it there can be but I don't think those are all that injurious and you do what your duty tells you to do and you know kind of like God sort out the rest of it so what what what we're talking about here is Poe if you want me to do X if you want me to attack Iran say then these are the questions you have to ask yourself in terms of what happens afterward that that's that that's the kind of dialogue you you think is really important in your role critically important President Emeritus Jim Wright of Dartmouth has written an article in the Atlantic last summer a year ago and he said what did we learn from the Korean War and really the question is how can the country go relatively enthusiastically into Wars since World War two and not know how to end them you know Korea of Vietnam Iraq dare I say Afghanistan and Jim right point out that if you start with murky political end states if the politicians have not said this is what we want then you're liable to find any road will get you there and you don't know what you're doing pretty soon because you're not sure what you're doing is right you'll start cranking down very tightly on rules of engagement because you want to do it the right way even if you're not sure if it's the right thing and now you're into a stagnating kind of situation the American people understandably grow dismayed by the whole thing so you must start with very clearly articulated political end States and then you figure out what are the diplomatic and economic means what are the information means Radio Free Europe was very effective during the Cold War a certain you look at the CIA and the military but you can't keep reaching for the CIA and military because they're organized for competition and just dismiss economic or diplomatic or information means because they're not organized to compete in a global argument we've got to use all those elements and you'd very clearly articulated political end states to ensure we don't get into these wars without end and and you you've been involved in in the last decade and in all these wars that we fought and it was a real sort of learning experience you were billeted back to Quantico where you helped write a new counterinsurgency doctrine talk about that because what what in reading about you what what was quite interesting was the generals in a way had to learn from their soldiers about what they were experiencing and rethink the strategy and broaden the strategy so so it you had to win over the people you had to do things that we're not just fighting and being a warrior right you know if you read enough history you realize there's nothing new on to the Sun that's the bottom line but each situation is unique history will not tell you how to do in every circumstance but it will light the path ahead for you and say here is how other people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with a similar situation you never really know an enemy until you fight them you can read all about them you can get your intelligence reports but until you close in on them you can't really know this enemy so as we fought the enemy for example in Iraq where we went in with basically a conventional force to fight a conventional army as we shifted to counterinsurgency we had to capture the lessons that were unique to that circumstance because the fundamental nature of war will never change the character of war is changing all the time like a chameleon as von Clausewitz puts it so what we were trying to do is capture those lessons learned Harry and make certain that they were passed on in training so the troops were at the top of their game as they deployed into the combat zone in confronting the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq it was a learning experience for you and I have the sense that you're not a general who's back you know away from the front so talk a little about that I mean you're a guy who's out there with the soldiers learning from them you know understanding the the particular talent in the course of the conflict I mean generalizations are never fully accurate but there's really two kinds of generals one of them gets briefed by his staff about what's going on and the other one briefs his staff what's going on I found it much more accurate and much faster decision-making in terms of the process if I would go out and spend most of my time with the lead elements and then come back and debrief my staff on what was going on they would tell me how they read it and basically use Hegel's dialectic I'd give them a thesis they give me sometimes a antithesis and we'd come up with some synthesis of understanding where we were at and what we wanted to do I would give a fair amount of time early in a day or late at night with the staff time what I wanted to do then I would go out and wander around basically and the further front I got the more I could really get a sense if the lads thought they were they were winning they were surging if there were aggravations if there were supply problems that sort of thing I doubt they're on the spot with the authority given to obviously a commander to to set them up for success so really I thought it was more important to be in that position in that role I knew I had a great deal of confidence in my staff they were all combat experienced they knew what they were doing with some commander's intent they knew how to keep the division running now I had to get out and see what was going on and give them feedback so we didn't use command and control we use command and feedback I wasn't that interested in control in my units because battlefield opportunities open and closed very quickly if they knew my intent and they were taking advantage of those opportunities they would be feeding back to me successes they had identified and used their aggressiveness to take advantage of rather than waiting for me to say for them say mother mae-eye and that sort of thing so out wandering around like that really unleashed a lot of combat power let's talk you about some of your recent battles and so you were involved in in the first forces in Afghanistan taking counter what was the challenge there and how did you adapt to that situation the challenges really were twofold one was the depth of the insertion it was 350 nautical miles one way by helicopter from the North Arabian Sea it involved marine kc-130 s refueling helicopters at night over mountains going in the enemy obviously greatly outnumbered us during the opening days of the fight upwards of 20,000 in Kandahar because they had fallen back in their defeats by the CIA and Special Forces led national or northern alliance they had fallen back from mazar-e-sharif to Kabul the Conda haar their spiritual home my job was to move against Condor so we knew that the distance would make it a tough fight if the enemy chose to really come out strongly they didn't again we didn't know them well until we fought them but they lacked the courage to close on the sailors and Marines the ferocity and the skill of the sailors Marines was more than sufficient there the second challenge really was dealing with Pakistan the when the Admiral leaned across the table one night in Bahrain the fleet commander Vice Admiral William Warren said can you get the Marines from the Mediterranean the Pacific together and move against Conda Harr I say yep I can do that he said okay go tell me what you need and go plan it and do it he was very comfortable with that idea he trusted me we had not served together before he was a three-star I was a one-star but he put me in command of seven of his ships and ten thousand sailors and Marines ultimately and then I went with the lads there was a country Pakistan between the water and Afghanistan so I went to Pakistan in a very long discussion the Pakistanis agreed to give me a beachhead a nearby runway that I could use to offload gear from the ships and bring in c-130s and Air Force c-17 to land on dirt on a dry lakebed in Afghanistan so we could build up combat power and move against Kandahar so those were the two biggest challenge the distance and having to deal with Pakistan by the way Pakistan knew H hour and d-day and the objective three weeks in advance they kept it secret and every time I moved up towards the borders in the high country I would fly to Islamabad first over the succeeding months and they would move front tier wings around to help contain the enemy as we moved against them on our side of the border so there would have been no naval ground campaign southern Afghanistan in 2001 the closing months of 2001 2002 without Pakistani help in your role you deploy diplomatic skills it sounds like to me so that so that you had a problem here that is getting the Pakistanis on board so you had to listen to what they said and understand their interests I think they wanted you to do a lot of this at night you said earlier so so talk a little about that so so there has to be a respect and a sense of the interest of people who are working with you well the first point is we need officers today who are not just willing to listen to other people's ideas but willing to be persuaded by them and there's a world of difference between son said ok I'm going to listen to you Harry I'm going to go off and do the same thing I was going to do in the first place no matter what you say and those are willing to say I'm willing to listen to you and if you have a better idea then I'll do what you recommend in Pakistan's case when I first got there in landed in Islamabad I had a great little map and it showed what I was going to do showed a little ship out in the ocean and arrow going to Afghanistan and this sort of thing and I walked in to see our ambassador there I'd landed at midnight walked into her office about 8 o'clock in the morning and she said who the hell are you and what are you doing in my country and I thought well this isn't going to go so well so I said well madam ambassador I didn't Jim mattis are going to take about a thousand my best friends up Afghanistan kill some people and she said really generously yes ma'am she said well sit down I think I can help you and she opened every door at the Pakistan joint headquarters of their military I went over to see them and the Pakistanis it was it went from a very cordial call like a regimental tea and the finest British officers mess tradition and many of them saying my best year of my life was a year spent at Fort Leavenworth training with your army or a year of Maxwell Air Force Base learning with your Air Force but up against the wall we're a bunch of young officers and if looks could kill who is or that they didn't care for me an amendment called the Pressler amendment had gone into effect and said that those officers could never come to America for training so we had cut them off we were angry at them for policy reasons and instead of continuing to work with them we had cut them off and now here I was needing their help and their freedom to operate over their country they noted they started with Francis Gary Powers being shot down some years ago I was not yet in my teens we were never to reveal the base he flew out of to the world to the Russians he'd flown out of Pakistan of course hey cuz you too over the top of Russia they talked about and they went on for years about disappointments with us including that they had bought f-16s from us and then we had parked them in Arizona and hangars refused to give them the money back refused to send them the airplanes but we did send them a bill every month for rental on the hangars and finally I said you know I'm not a politician I'm going to Afghanistan I'm going to fly over one or two countries and will you help me and then they gave us all the help in the world I think it's important that you be willing to walk in another man's shoes and listen to them and understand they may have legitimate reasons to be disappointed with us even Winston Churchill who had a bit of love for Americans said you can trust the Americans after they've exhausted all possible alternatives to do the right thing we frustrate a lot of people in the world and it's often we're most peevish with our friends it's like we deal more rationally at times with our enemies and adversaries and we treat our friends in a very derogatory way and often in a publicly humiliating manner and I think that is very unproductive and I I never apologize for American foreign policy but I do try to understand other people's points of view let's look at Iraq for a moment and talk a little about Fallujah because that those battles the taking of the place then the retaking of it and ultimately the the loss of its al-qaeda that was an experience in which your adversary was really changing was it not I mean in other words it was more of an indigenous force that you were dealing with that had emerged after the overthrow of the Regular Army talk a little about that is that is that a fair assessment I think that is fair what had happened was al Qaeda was now moving in in strength and the Sunni tribes very disillusioned since the Sunni minority and dominated Iraq and the Shia majority they were very disappointed when Saddam was overthrown but as we came in to relieve the 82nd airborne division we we just left some units as recently as September and by January we were already shipping our gear back onboard ship and some of us were reporting in to go back into the fight during that interim it had turned from area down south where I'd only lost two men killed and about 50 wounded over five months and I think that was mostly criminal elements into a full-fledged insurgency out in the in the Sunni triangle so we had a view towards how we could turn them around Brigadier General John Kelly my assistant division commander had gone in he was convinced we could turn the Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda frankly we didn't think it'd take us five years to do it but we we had a vision of where we wanted to go in this case in Fallujah some contractors lost on the battlefield not checking in with the Marines took a direct route from Baghdad to another city that took them through Fallujah a very unwise move they were captured killed they were bodies were burned and they were strung up on a bridge both general Conway my core level commander my marine expeditionary force commander lieutenant general and I strongly recommended we not attack the city it was a city of 350,000 people it I did not have many troops I could throw at it because we were holding a very wide area and the enemy is rising all across stepped on so when when we were finally ordered to go in it was something that we had to scramble to bring in assault battalions to do we hadn't isolated the city and it was a tough fight it was a very tough fight when they ordered us to stop in place we were probably within 48 to 96 hours of crushing the enemy at this point we'd contained them in a small area and they had not stockpiled enough ammunition and now we were it would become in a very lucrative fight for us in terms of the enemy paying a price at that point for political reasons we were stopped I was ordered to start negotiating with the enemy we did so and after 70 odd days and we pulled back it was probably best summed up though and turned to the impact on the Marines with a young man who was interviewed on TV blond-haired very young dirty machine gunner and they said isn't this terrible you've lost her buddies you're now being ordered to pull back don't you feel terrible this must be terrible you must be terribly angry at the political leadership and he was a slow talking boy from down south and he said no he said we'll just find him somewhere else and kill him so the Marines did not suffer the loss of morale that would have concerned me greatly and it's a testimonial to their fighting faith because I was very concerned at this point but they did not take it badly then eventually I had rotated out and we went in and we lost hundreds of soldiers sailors Marines in actually taking the city I went into the city a few years later I didn't have to wear a helmet or flak jacket obviously had turned around and then since the American troops were pulled out by the administration the Maliki government has not endeared itself to the Sunni tribes again so I don't think the city's fallen to al-qaeda certainly the Sunni tribes do not want the Iraqi army they see it as the Shia army in their town the losers always been a rather a rather tough town throughout history but at the same time I wouldn't say al-qaeda holds the town because al-qaeda and the Sunni tribes do not have a long love affair that they don't care for each other so we'll just have to see how it how it evolves and see if Maliki can make it an inclusive government that brings the Sunnis back in with a sense of ownership of the government right now we have not seen that in your description of your your core and of the sense of duty and responsibility what sort of problem is posed by the frustration of leaving Iraq completely I mean is it is it something because of the training and and the focus on the job and the responsibilities to civilian leadership that it's it's not as much of a problem it can be transcended the frustration of after all of these battles Lee having to leave Iraq and and not being able to do the mentoring that was really necessary for the Iraqi forces yeah the Iraqi forces were were very immature still I mean they'd been put together in the midst of a murderous war they hadn't had time to grow the institution's certainly there was the ethical consideration that we were not there on the scene to guide them and make certain that the weapons we had given them the training we'd given them were not used for unethical reasons in a region that is just fraught with with polarities tribal religious this sort of thing so certainly we felt an ethical a moral responsibility that we stay there but also if you look at World War two certainly we brought most of our troops home from Japan and Germany when the war was over but we didn't bring them all home we weren't willing to say we're going to spend that amount of life and treasure and then just turn on and walk away and by 1948 of course we're building up NATO because of the the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union and the troops in Japan a couple years later would be deployed to Korea to fight against the the Communist advance there and so there was there's also a sense of don't snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory it was a victory the Iraqi people had a chance to make it happen plus there was the sense that with the Americans there it was harder to deal harshly with the Kurdish or with the Sunni minorities there just America is a pluralistic society and we don't think if one side wins an election that the other side simply has no rights so there was a sense that we could help cement the the kind of the fruits of the victory we'd achieved the military victory it was not a total victory so that's kind of where we were coming from and why we recommended that we keep troops there the political decision by President Obama was we would not keep troops there you have a quote that I found which is in this age I don't care how actively or operationally brilliant you are if you cannot create harmony even vicious harmony on the battlefield based on trust across service lines across coalition and national lines and across civilian military lines you need to go home because your leadership is obsolete we have got to have officers who can create harmony across all lines I'm very interested in this across coalition of national lines because as military budgets are reduced in the future we're going to have to be able to do that you're 100% correct further I have never fought in an all-american formation I have always had allies many of whom didn't even speak English right beside us fighting alongside us and we have got to have the ability to see what they can do we can't say well they don't have radios as good as ours or they don't have Jets as good as ours there's plenty of room for everyone my headquarters in Iraq my Division Headquarters was guarded by Tongan Marines from the little island nation of in the Pacific and I asked him what are you doing here why are you in Iraq and they said we have an international responsibility to stand with the Americans when they do something like that because they've always stood with us friends need tending but you can have the best of intentions break down on a battlefield if you don't have officers who are willing to listen to others and use them in a manner that they can be best used I would I would just tell you two that went in Churchill again is said the only thing more difficult than fighting with allies is fighting without allies it is it is harder but there are ways where you lay out missions and allow their commanders to select which missions they can do that to me is a normal part of coalition warfare there are countries take ownership of their forces they're not giving them to the Americans to be used anyway we wish there are some caveats is what we call it national caveats I've never found those to be a bar to imaginative use of their forces still consistent with their political masters intent so you've got to have this as the bottom line and as we shrink the US military you're exactly right this is going to be more important than ever and if we can't do it well in our military then even political alliances and coalition's will not make up for a brittleness on the battlefield and yes its harmony its it operations today move at the speed of trust that's the bottom line and that creates this harmony that we need we're confronting a world with unbelievable problems I mean just take off a couple Syria Iran what do we do about their nuclear program we have allies that sometimes don't always cooperate in terms of our national interests say the israel-palestine conflict and searching for a resolution there I guess what I want to ask you as a as a kind of an outspoken general on the one hand but a very thoughtful general who who is both a theorist and a practitioner that's what I'll label I'll give you how do you see the military contributing to this dialogue on the they're very different issues I understand that but but the military has ideas to bring to the table talk about how you see that playing out with without necessarily getting into great detail about any of these problems yeah let me talk about the themes I would adopt if we don't fully fund State Department I used to tell people on Capitol Hill then please buy more ammunition for me because I'm going to get in more fights so the first point is to make certain that we're not always reaching for the military or CIA when there's a problem that makes certain the traditional rules the traditional roles of statecraft are used as well diplomacy economic means coalition building that sort of thing now certainly if if I would just sum up some of my missions in the Middle East one was to make certain that the free shipping lanes the the shipping lanes were kept free for commerce and oil and all to move through to stand by our allies when they were up against terrorists you know that sort of thing but the real mission I had was to try to keep what passes for peace in the Middle East which had granted Syria and Iran and everything else but try to keep the peace or what passes for peace for one more year one more month one more week one more day one more hour to allow the Secretary of State and the other political efforts to try to solve these maddening problems in you're right we're in a we're in a world awash with change and transitions and and Wars and the rest so the military often is the tool that buys the time it doesn't solve many of the problems it can solve some problems people who say war never solved anything haven't read our history it solves slavery once and for all in this country it's all putting Jews in ovens once and for all by Hitler so the military can solve something but it a pretty brittle instrument so when especially in these wars among the people we need to create more and more coalition's we need to look at other ways to compete not just military and CIA and make certain we're using the traditional tools of statecraft that the approach has got to be one of coalition building of treating our friends well and being willing to side with non-traditional allies security allies even when we don't agree with everything they do inside their country FDR was a pretty progressive president but he was willing to side with Stalin to defeat Hitler I would think that we can also side with countries that are not perfect we sometimes expect perfection from other countries that we don't expect from our own and so we make these coalition's and the military's role is to buy time which allows for traditional statecraft to solve the problem and in the case of World War two it was the American military that could defeat Hitler and stop what was going on you know in the camps I guess that what I hear you saying and actually there's an example that I heard you talk about so the military can also be used to sort of diminish the the the rush toward war there is the case of the Iranians threatening to close the Persian Gulf talk a little about that because you used your military and you found a coalition there in doing that well and and one point I would make is you when the enemy's digging a hole don't stop them let them continue to dig themselves into the hole in this case you'll recall from a couple years ago Harry the out of Tehran they were constantly talking about their ability to mine the Straits of Hormuz to stop the flow of oil and of course it sent shudders through the world economy repeatedly and countries all around the world that rely on that oil not so much the Americans by the way we're very worried but only the American fifth fleet was trusted by everyone out there to be the coalescing force so as this was going on I was growing increasingly concerned that because of all this political talk out of Tehran some young zealot of a commander and the Iranian Republican Guard Navy would take it on himself to dump mines there or they would actually make the political decision in Tehran and I tried to think of how do we prevent this so we came up with the idea of having the u.s. 5th fleet lead an international anti mine coalition not an anti Iran coalition anti mine now there's only one country over there that's ever threatened to use mines but we were silent on that we put the word out and I assume we would get maybe a half a dozen nations you know France Britain United Arab Emirates kind of our usual friends and allies in fact the first time we ran it 29 nations showed up it included Canada Estonia Singapore Djibouti Japan these are not bellicose nations 29 nations they showed up the next year by the way there's 35 nations and under US v fleet they all came together they discussed what they would do if there were mines put in the water we then tested new technology from the United Kingdom we had divers from Djibouti underwater looking for mines and how they would go about clearing the Straits and when we were done when and we put it out on the press we didn't hide it one bit what we were doing when we were done we had convinced the Iranians that's toned down the rhetoric to stop talking about it you've heard very little about this over the last two years now because they realized they were actually creating a worldwide coalition against them and by doing this we reduced the chance for a mistake a miscalculation and at that point we were buying time for then Secretary Clinton to continue to amass the economic sanctions against Iran and try to tone it down use non-military means to try to solve this problem since another war in the Middle East would be catastrophic so that's an example of how the US military the only one who could have brought that many disparate nations together and buy time for the diplomats to do their do their magic frankly one last question students watching this program what advice you would give them about preparing for a future in the military and and as a little note here I want to add a quote from you where you say now from a distance I look back on what the Corps taught me to think like men of action and to act like men of thought to live life with intensity and a passion for excellence how does that translate into preparations that students might think about for the future in the military there is there is a disappointing aspect to all this that after thousands of years of living on this planet we're still at a point where violence is used to settle differences and it can be depressing for those young men and women who are choosing to go into the military the the point I would make is that no matter how bad any situation is do not fall into pessimism or defeatism or cynicism because all cynicism is is a refuge it says I don't have to do anything about this because after all it's such a bad situation I exempt myself from having to work on it so the first point is guard yourself and don't let the disappointment drive you to to a negative view of the world the second point is remember that America has the power of inspiration and the power of intimidation and don't shortchange you either one of those make certain that at times if you can use the power of inspiration to bring out the better angels and people keep trying one more month one more week one more day to do so whether it be with a small village that's trying to fight terrorists or it's a it's a high-level meeting but at the same time if you have covenants without swords if you have no effective military then your moral voice will never be heard as loudly and dare I say that we just saw what Putin did in Crimea and made me that he thought he had an opportunity there that we've not demonstrated a steadfast basically that we're sticking with our allies so I think you've got to recognize in the real world a combination of between the ability to inspire an ability to intimidate and don't overuse one or the other a blend of them that would be my advice to them Jim I want to thank you for coming to the campus to be the Nimitz lecturer and and thank you for taking the time and your schedule to be on our program it was both informative and inspiring thank you thank you this is a pleasure here this is some things are work and some are play this is a pleasure thank you very much and thank you for joining us for this conversation with history

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 235,319

Keywords: General James Mattis, Marines, military, Afghanistan, Iraq

Id: HOc38ZwEO8s

Length: 59min 24sec (3564 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 05 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Tactical_OUtcaller]

"enemies that are dumber than a bucket full of rocks" so 99.9% of the player base

[u/Cplblue]

Came for the quick joke, stayed for the interview. Love Mattis.

[u/xenalfy]

"the qualities of humanity ... a sense of humor"