Was Jim Mattis The Last 'Adult' in Trump's Room?

Peter Van Buren
Dec. 25, 2018

The idea Mattis was the "adult in the room," the moral and intellectual restraint on Trump's evil wishes, is tired. We've been recycling that one for two years and more now, as various "adults" were christened as such and rose and fell in the eyes of the media — Flynn, McMaster, Tillerson, Kelly, and now Mattis (the media regards Pompeo and Bolton as "dangerous" and thus not adults. Nobody else seems to make the news.)

Despite these adults' irregularly scheduled regular departures, there has been no catastrophe, no war with Iran or China, no dismantlement of NATO, no invasion of Freedonia. We can certainly argue over the rights and wrongs of Trump's foreign policy decisions (for example, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement) as with any other president, but that clearly falls within the boundaries of standard disagreements, not Apocalypse 2018: Trump Unleashed. The big news is that none of the terrible things and in reality, tweets aside, very few of the small bad things, have come to pass. It's almost as if all the predictions have been… wrong.

Somewhat unique to the Trump era is the idea cabinet officials, appointed by the President and who work for the executive branch, are supposed to be part of some underground #Resistance check and balance system. One pundit critically observed "If Trump holds to form, he will look for a new secretary of Defense who sees the job as turning his preferences into policy rather acting as a guardrail on his impulses." Leaving out the hyperbole, isn't that what all presidents look for in their cabinet, people who will help them enact policy? A writer in the NYT was more direct, saying "Many, in other words, hoped that Mr. Mattis would be willing to subvert American democracy in order to check a bad president." Um, you mean throwing away the rules of our democracy to save it, simply because you disagree with the president's decisions? Sure, nothing to worry about there. We'll just run for awhile as a chaotic autocracy of unelected generals until we can get a good president.

Positions like Secretary of Defense exist to carry out the policies of the executive branch, offering advice and counsel of course, but ultimately are not independent actors. I can't seem to recall anyone saying Donald Rumsfeld failed to control the worst impulses of George Bush, or was expected to do so. No, this is a role imagined into existence by a paranoid media streamlined now to condemn anything Trump does and praise the, well, opposite. Much media have been spent explained how it was good Mattis "slow walked" and stalled orders from his boss. In any other administration that would be called borderline insubordination; it is real chaotic when underlings don't follow orders. People usually get fired for that. With Trump somehow it is labeled courageous. I do wonder how open Mattis would be for some of his generals slow walking a few of his own orders, you know, the ones they disagree with politically.

To accept the media's Mattis/Syria narrative, you must also accept:

— the purpose of Cabinet officials is not to implement executive policy but to resist it, in secret and unconstitutionally if necessary;

— this change from the last 230 years is because Trump is uniquely a dangerous man who requires us to sacrifice democracy to save it until we can elect a Democrat;

— only military men can really be trusted to do this;

— American troops in Syria are a key element of America's defense and foreign policy and so much depends on them staying in place;

— Mattis departing means 2019 will be a stream of war and chaos as Trump is unleashed, so watch for that.

WaPo claims "Mattis reportedly told the commander of the Strategic Command to keep him directly informed of any event that might lead to a nuclear alert being sent to Trump." The implication is Trump could run amuck and trigger nuclear armageddon.

But for the WaPo story to be true, you have to believe prior to this the Secretary of Defense, whose office is part of the chain of command that would launch any actual response, was not being informed alongside the president of nuclear-alert level events. And that is absolutely not accurate. "Hey, Mr. President, Staff Sergeant Jones here from NORAD. Yeah, fine, thanks for asking. Hey, sorry to wake you, but I wanted you to be literally the first to know a massive Russian first strike is inbound. You want me to call anyone else or you gonna do it?"

Funny thing, but here's a partial list of things that happened when Mattis (and McGurk, below) was in senior leadership positions which did not call forward from him an act of conscience such as resigning: Bush starting the Iraq war based on lies, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Gitmo, torture, drone killings of multiple civilians. And Obama agreeing to forever hide torture, drone killing American citizens, invading Libya under whatever pretenses, not closing Gitmo. And Trump threatening nuclear war with North Korea. Nope, that was all apparently cool. Just don't ask these guys to stop a war.

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