Jim Mattis
James Norman Mattis is an American military officer who served as the 26th United States secretary of defense from 2017 to 2019. A retired Marine Corps four-star general, he commanded forces in the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.
Mattis was commissioned in the Marine Corps through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps after graduating from Central Washington University. A career Marine, he gained a reputation among his peers for intellectualism and eventually advanced to the rank of general. From 2007 to 2010, he commanded the United States Joint Forces Command and concurrently served as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. He was commander of United States Central Command from 2010 to 2013, with Admiral Bob Harward serving as his deputy commander. After retiring from the military, Mattis held several private sector roles, including serving on the board of directors at Theranos.
Mattis was nominated as secretary of defense by president-elect Donald Trump, and confirmed by the Senate on January 20, 2017. As secretary of defense, Mattis affirmed the United States' commitment to defending longtime ally South Korea in the wake of the 2017 North Korea crisis. An opponent of proposed collaboration with China and Russia, Mattis stressed what he saw as their "threat to the American-led world order". Mattis occasionally voiced his disagreement with certain Trump administration policies such as the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, withdrawals of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, and budget cuts hampering the ability to monitor the impacts of climate change. According to The Hill, Mattis also reportedly dissuaded Trump from attempting to assassinate Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria.
On December 20, 2018, after failing to convince Trump to reconsider his decision to withdraw all American troops from Syria, Mattis announced his resignation effective the end of February 2019; after Mattis's resignation generated significant media coverage, Trump abruptly accelerated Mattis's departure date to January 1, 2019, stating that he had essentially fired Mattis.
Early life
Mattis was born on September 8, 1950, in Pullman, Washington. He is the son of Lucille Mattis and John West Mattis, a merchant mariner. His mother immigrated to the United States from Canada as an infant and had worked in Army Intelligence in South Africa during the Second World War. Mattis's father moved to Richland, Washington, to work at a plant supplying fissile material to the Manhattan Project. Mattis was raised in a bookish household that did not own a television.Mattis graduated from Richland High School in 1968. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from Central Washington University in 1971 and a Master of Arts in international security affairs from the National War College of National Defense University in 1994.
Marine career
Mattis enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1969. He was commissioned a second lieutenant through the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps on January 1, 1972. During his service years, Mattis was considered an "intellectual" among the upper ranks. Robert H. Scales, a retired United States Army major general, called him "one of the most urbane and polished men I have known." As a lieutenant, Mattis was assigned as a rifle and weapons platoon commander in the 3rd Marine Division. As a captain, he was assigned as the Naval Academy Preparatory School's Battalion Officer, commanded rifle and weapons companies in the 1st Marine Regiment, then served at Recruiting Station Portland, Oregon, as a major.Upon promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel, Mattis commanded 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, one of Task Force Ripper's assault battalions during the Gulf War. As a colonel, Mattis commanded the 7th Marine Regiment from June 28, 1994, to June 14, 1996.
Mattis is a graduate of the US Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, US Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the National War College. He is noted for his interest in the study of military history and world history, with a personal library that once included over 7,000 volumes, and a penchant for publishing required reading lists for Marines under his command. He required his Marines to be well-read in the culture and history of regions where they were deployed, and had his Marines deploying to Iraq undergo "cultural sensitivity training". According to an article published in 2004 by the Los Angeles Times it was his concern for the enlisted ranks along with his energy and enthusiasm that garnered him the nickname "Mad Dog". But in 2016, when President-elect Trump asked Mattis if his nickname was indeed "Mad Dog", Mattis replied, "No, sir," saying that his actual nickname was "Chaos".
War in Afghanistan
Mattis led the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade as its commanding officer upon promotion to brigadier general. It was as a regimental commander that he earned his nickname and call sign, "CHAOS", an acronym for "Colonel Has Another Outstanding Solution", which was initially somewhat tongue in cheek.During the initial planning for the War in Afghanistan, Mattis led Task Force 58 in operations in the southern part of the country beginning in November 2001. This led to him becoming the first Marine Corps officer to command a Naval Task Force in combat. According to Mattis, his objective upon arriving in Afghanistan was to "make sure that the enemy didn't feel like they had any safe haven, to destroy their sense of security in southern Afghanistan, to isolate Kandahar from its lines of communication, and to move against Kandahar". In December 2001, an airstrike carried out by a B-52 bomber inadvertently targeted a position held by US special operations troops and Afghan militiamen in Uruzgan Province. Numerous men were wounded in the incident, but Mattis repeatedly refused to dispatch helicopters from the nearby Camp Rhino to recover them, citing operational safety concerns. Instead, an Air Force helicopter flew from Uzbekistan to ferry the men to the Marine Corps base where helicopters sat readily available but unauthorized to fly. Captain Jason Amerine blamed the delay caused by Mattis's refusal to order a rescue operation for the deaths of several men. Amerine wrote, "Every element in Afghanistan tried to help us except the closest friendly unit, commanded by Mattis," though he also wrote that "none of that was assessed properly because the chose not to call for a formal investigation". This episode was used against Mattis when he was nominated for defense secretary in 2016.
While serving in Afghanistan as a brigadier general, Mattis was known as an officer who engaged his men with "real leadership". A young Marine officer, Nathaniel Fick, said he witnessed Mattis in a fighting hole talking with a sergeant and lance corporal: "No one would have questioned Mattis if he'd slept eight hours each night in a private room, to be woken each morning by an aide who ironed his uniforms and heated his MREs. But there he was, in the middle of a freezing night, out on the lines with his Marines."