ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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kolyaboo wrote:

Seriously? The good guys in Syria? There are no good guys in a war that has targeted civilians for like 8 years.

Mattis always seemed like an odd choice but some of the Pentagon clowns are actually less dangerous than the Stateys. And that is a sad fact. Not sure about his departure.

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鬼殺し wrote:
Not really. Trump is someone who demands the best, always, and Mattis is one of the most decorated, respected generals living today. That is, 'the best'. So of course Trump would want one in his collection.

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kolyaboo wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:
Not really. Trump is someone who demands the best, always, and Mattis is one of the most decorated, respected generals living today. That is, 'the best'. So of course Trump would want one in his collection.

You might not be aware (and I'm not being snarky or anything) of the fact that all US defense secs have been from the corporate world since Eisenhower's time (or could be WW2; either way close enough).

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He needed a waiver from Congress to allow his nomination to be considered, as he had only been separated from the military for the previous three years despite U.S. federal law requiring at least seven years of retirement for former military personnel to be appointed Secretary of Defense.

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kolyaboo wrote:

Name one then. And don't name someone that was drafted and spent a 2 years or so in the military. I'm talking career military here.

You can easily disprove it by naming one of them. And btw, forget Gates. I can tell you for a fact that he was on the board of Fidelity right around the time. Rumsfeld, Merrill Lynch.

Yeah, the fact that Mattis needed a waiver tells you that they don't put career military in that position.

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鬼殺し wrote:
I was shower-thinking, as one does. I think it went a little like this.

It's well-known that Trump's happiest days and possibly most personally successful were when his dad 'exiled' him to military school to get straightened out. Although Donny didn't fit perfectly with the military structure, it gave him an environment where the people he had to answer to took zero shit and his peers were all competitors and rivals. This meant he had a system to learn and a hierarchy that made complete sense to a narcissist obsessed with self-achievement.

I reckon he never outgrew a yearning for those days and figured putting 'my generals' into play, even if in roles that they usually don't fill, might in some way provide a measure of that efficient, clean-cut hierarchical system that so enabled his younger self to shine, with no help from anyone.

But then there's the Donald Trump who came after those days, the brash, my-way-or-the-fuckoff-way, and he's been around a lot longer than the competitive but ultimately well-disciplined Donny of military school. And this Trump doesn't like being told what to do. He disdains experts because they're all talk, no action (never mind that one doesn't exactly rise to the rank of general without seeing quite a lot of action and knowing when to talk, when to act). Perhaps it would have been easier for him if Kelly, Mattis, McMaster and co were forced to wear their old uniforms while on the job. Bereft of those, they just became yet more civilian complications for whom Donald Trump had little time.

And once that became impossible to deny, that 'his generals' were now politicians trying to deal with his very unpolitical modus operandi, then it was a matter of time before all of those generals walked, one way or another.

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Xavderion wrote:

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Khoranth wrote:

Good for Mattis. It seriously looks like Turkey is going to genocide our allies in Syria. I'd resign too.

If you have to babysit a NATO ally to not genocide people, you gotta pick better allies.

Anyways, Mattis will be missed. Super competent guy who did a great job. Sadly he's the wrong guy for Trump's current plan (gtfo of Syria and Afghanistan and build that big beautiful wall).

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morbo wrote:

Mr. Trump delivered some nice Christmas presents 5 mins to noon. First pulling out forces from the destructive pro-Zionist war in Syria - a bold and unexpected move. US was illegaly occupying Syrian soil and no leftist was ever bothered by this. Hmm?

Next, also possibly pulling out from Afghanistan - a decades long useless neverending occupation that achieved nothing. A total waste of resources, lives & money.

Of course the warmongering liberal elites in the so called "free press", are all counter-signaling these moves and siding with the military-industrial complex, aka "generals". What an upside down clown world :D

Liberals = keep the wars going, Drumpfh!! = imperialist neocons. Same shyte.

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And now the House approves 5.7bn wall funding.