The Blood-soaked Career of General James Mattis

“It is clear that Trump's secretary of defense selection of Mattis, an unprosecuted war criminal, is yet another egregious act against justice and the rule of international law. Mattis was a high-level marine commander overseeing both sieges of Fallujah who then played an active role in making sure eight marines involved in a massacre walked away from any appropriate punishment.” – Dahr Jamail (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38620-james-mattis-is-a-war-criminal-i-experienced-his-attack-on-fallujah-firsthand)

Donald Trump clearly meets most of the qualities of sociopathic personality disorder and his tactics and political belief system really can’t be distinguished from fascism. So it shouldn’t be surprising to recognize many of the same traits in his appointees.

Most of his civilian appointees so far are billionaires who acquired their excess luxury wealth because of either 1) their inherited wealth, 2) their good fortune in stock market speculating, 3) their connections to Big Banks and/or 4) their connections to similarly sociopathic, amoral – and remorseless - multi-national corporations. The ones enriched with inherited wealth strut around like they had just hit a triple and don’t realize that they were born on third base. It is the rare billionaire who doesn’t think he deserves his wealth and therefore often flaunts it like most rich narcissists do.

Most large corporations meet the definition of sociopathy and their excessively remunerated management types meet the definition of narcissistic personality disorder. Most successful CEOs of sociopathic corporations- including high ranking officers in the military - are able to climb over competitors and get to the top or the heap by employing brutal means. That willingness to proactively and ruthlessly use force gives his company a chance to thrive in the capitalist system’s ruthless, dog-eat-dog culture. In the warrior culture, proactive and ruthless use of lethal force gives his soldiers a chance to kill more effectively than the enemy.

Several of the PEOTUS’ cabinet appointees are high-ranking “lifer” military officers who have an innate disdain for democratic values (as would be expected for anybody whose career has been lived in the bubble of a hierarchical culture whose main junk values are 1) shoot first/ask questions later and 2) the use of dominative power over “enemies” via military violence.

The Trump appointee for the Secretary of Defense, US Marine Corps General “Mad Dog” James Mattis fits the bill, as do the other career military appointees.

Courageous war journalist Dahr Jamail did some powerful reporting during the Bush Wars. Sadly, and predictably, his reports were blacked out of the mainstream media. The excerpts below are part of what he had to say about one of the two US Marine’s massacres of the city of Fallujah, both of which easily qualified as international war crimes as well as crimes against humanity.

The details that Jamail learned from witnesses is trial court-worthy evidence to be brought before the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague against Mattis and any number of US Marines (especially the snipers), not to mention their superiors and partners in war crimes, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who only have figurative blood – not actual blood - on their hands.

Of course, such a tribunal against the military of the only superpower on the planet (and their once “respectable” leaders who consider themselves above the law) will probably never come to pass given the tendency for America to NEVER allow the besmirching of the reputations of politically-powerful institutions or financially-powerful corporations if those innately amoral entities have been sanctified by sufficient amounts of propaganda.

Jamail wrote:

“Thus began my witnessing of an endless stream of women and children who had been shot by the US soldiers and were now being raced into the dirty clinic…One 18-year-old girl had been shot through the neck…Her younger brother, a small child of 10 with a gunshot wound in his head from a marine sniper, his eyes glazed and staring into space, continually vomited as the doctors raced to save his life while family members cried behind me. ‘The Americans cut our electricity days ago, so we cannot vacuum the vomit from his throat’, a furious doctor tells me. They were both loaded into an ambulance and rushed toward Baghdad, only to die en route.

“Another small child lay on a blood-spattered bed, also shot by a sniper. The boy's grandmother lay nearby, shot as she was attempting to carry children from their home and flee the city. She lay on a bed dying, still clutching a bloodied white surrender flag. Hundreds of families were trapped in their homes, terrorized by US snipers shooting from rooftops and the minarets of mosques whenever they saw someone move past a window.

“One victim of the US military aggression after another was brought into the clinic, nearly all of them women and children, carried by weeping family members. Those who had not been hit by bombs from warplanes had been shot by US snipers…

“An ambulance driver said ‘They (US marines) shot the ambulance and they shot the driver after they inspected his car and knew that he was carrying nothing. Then they shot him. And then they shot the ambulance. And now I have no ambulance to evacuate the 20 wounded people‘…

"’For 47 years, I (the ambulance driver) had accepted the illusion of Europe and the United States being good for the world, the carriers of democracy and freedom. Now I see that it took me 47 years to wake up to the horrible truth. They are not here to bring anything like democracy or freedom.’

"’Now I see it has all been lies. The Americans don't give a damn about democracy or human rights. They are worse than even Saddam.’"

According to journalist Dave Schneider of www.fightbacknews.org:

“sharp aggression and enthusiasm for violent combat marks Mattis' 47-year military career. After leading an assault battalion during the 1991 US-led invasion of Iraq, Mattis became head of the Marines under George W. Bush. He led the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and later the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which killed an estimated 1 million Iraqis and over 4000 U.S. soldiers.

“During the 2004 siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah - the bloodiest battle of the war on Iraq - Mattis received the nickname “Mad Dog” by troops and reporters for his relentless and unhinged style of war. The siege left an estimated 1500 Iraqis and 95 U.S. soldiers dead.

“Mattis boasted in a 2005 interview that "it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot" people in Afghanistan, adding that if Iraqis "f… with me, I'll kill you all." Former soldiers serving under Mattis have also noted his enthusiasm for brutality.

“Mattis encouraged a general tolerance of war crimes in the Marines, and he insulated killers from scrutiny or prosecution. In 2007, a group of U.S. Marines massacred 24 unarmed Iraqi women, men and children in the city of Haditha. The incident, which drew comparisons to the My Lai massacre by US troops during the Vietnam War, promoted an investigation by military authorities. Mattis, head of the Marines' parent unit, cleared most of the accused soldiers and dismissed charges on several others. The only soldier to face consequences, Sergeant Frank Wuterich, received a small fine and no jail time after pleading guilty to a lesser charge of ‘dereliction of duty.’”

Below are excerpts from CounterPunch’s Brian Cloughley, which he titled: Mad Dog on the Prowl: the Blood-soaked Career of General James Mattis. The original article can be found at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/28/mad-dog-on-the-loose-the-blood-soaked-career-of-general-james-mattis/

“…during a presentation to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, Mattis “evoked laughter and applause” in the audience (by saying) ‘It’s fun to shoot some people’ …and there is “laughter and applause” from his audience. Are these real people? It is difficult in this supposedly civilized era to believe that two hundred citizens of an advanced western country would laugh and clap their hands when a general declares he thinks it fun to shoot people.

“It happened in Nazi Germany when fascist functionaries described what they had done or would do to Jews. Now it happens in America when a government functionary describes what he has done to Afghanis. None of the audience spoke out later, apart from retired Vice Admiral Edward H Martin who said ‘I don’t think any of us who have ever fought in wars liked to kill anybody’. He appears to have been the only human being in the whole gathering. What on earth has America come to?

“Mattis, unlike the honorable Admiral Martin, relishes killing people and is apparently well-known for his activities. No doubt this is why he has been promoted well beyond his ability. When I served in Vietnam with the Australian Army there was a saying in both our armies – “F…. up and Move up”. What it meant was this: the war in Vietnam was a disaster, but McNamara and all ‘The Best and the Brightest’ in Washington could not afford to reveal themselves as the incompetent boobies they were. They lost touch with reality and rewarded with promotion those who went along with their dismal self-deception that Vietnam was a winnable war.

“Senior officers who were hopelessly incompetent in Vietnam were not sacked. The administration could not possibly do that, because it would be an admission of failure – not of the officer concerned (although that might be considered a fairly important factor), but of those involved in the system as a whole. The pattern is being repeated.

“The Los Angeles Times reported that “On April 4, 2004, Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, whose units would carry the battle to Fallujah, summoned his commanders to a final briefing. The general, known as ‘Mad Dog Mattis’ to his men, made it clear that the Marines were now in warrior mode. ‘You know my rules for a gunfight?’ he asked a reporter outside the meeting. ‘Bring a gun, bring two guns, bring all your friends with guns’.”

“It is the attitude of Mattis and his breed – and there are lots like him, (like) the deranged General Boykin, who has drawn US forces into the disaster that Iraq has become. Their swaggering, triumphal, smack-’em-in-the-mouth approach has caused millions of Iraqis to hate American troops because from day one the Mattis-type people acted as if every Iraqi was an enemy. They weren’t then, but most of them are now, thanks to those in the military who followed the example of the all-American Marine who just loves killing people. He is a knuckle dragging buffoon, but the dangerous thing for the world is that he is a hero to millions.

“Some of us hoped that The Donald might calm down a bit and appoint at least a few rational people to important posts in the new administration. But if he’s going to choose people like Mad Dog Mattis, there isn’t much hope for the world. We should remember that on January 22 this year Trump boasted ‘I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.’ Amazingly, he was probably right, and as Mattis believes that “it’s a helluva lot of fun to shoot some people” it seems that they have a lot in common.

“It’s all over, save for the shooting.”

Below are excerpts from a Dave Schneider article at www.fightbacknews.org. It was titled: Trump picks corporate war criminal 'Mad Dog' Mattis for Secretary of Defense

“Picking Mattis signals Trump's intent to escalate military aggression towards Iran. During his tenure as head of Central Command from 2010 to 2013, Mattis pushed for the U.S. to take a more belligerent stance towards Iran. He proposed greater covert operations against the Iranian government and vocally opposed diplomatic efforts. When the Obama administration began negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program in 2013, they removed Mattis, an outspoken critic of the negotiations, from Central Command.

“During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly called for overturning the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran, which received approval from all five members of the UN Security Council in 2015…

“Like the rest of Trump's cabinet picks, Mattis also possesses deep ties to corporate America…Far from the populist rhetoric he used on the campaign trail, Trump's cabinet picks give the green light for the 1% to essentially raid the public treasury for their own profit.”

Following are some of Mad Dog Mattis’s “Killing in War is Fun” quotes and then, to make the point that Mattis’s having “fun in war” attitudes aren’t that much different from other traumatized combat soldiers throughout history, I include some photo images from Vietnam, Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.

First the Mattis quotes with the hope that most readers will be appalled at the notion that Donald Trump would want a potential war criminal to lead the US Department of War:

‘It’s quite fun to shoot them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”

“You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”

“There are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.”

“The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.”

“There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim. It’s really a hell of a lot of fun. You’re gonna have a blast out here!”

“I feel sorry for every son of a bitch that doesn’t get to serve with you.”

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’

“There is only one ‘retirement plan’ for terrorists.”

“There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them. I don’t think you do. It’s just business”

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