Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis showed his affinity for the D.C. Swamp in a “Foreign Affairs” op-ed on Monday in which he pressed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to ditch the America First agenda, Fox News reported.
President Donald Trump responded to Mattis on Tuesday in a tweet.
That says it all about Mattis. Obama fired him. I should have fired him sooner. Did best work after he was gone. World’s most overrated general! https://t.co/2i4jPWAAPA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2020
“In January, when President Joe Biden and his national security team begin to reevaluate U.S. foreign policy, we hope they will quickly revise the national security strategy to eliminate ‘America first’ from its contents, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades,” Mattis wrote, in conjunction with neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute and at the Hoover Institution.
Mattis said Trump’s foreign policy has threatened the international order and deserted America’s traditional allies.
“In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone,'” they wrote. “That has damaged the country’s ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.”
Trump pressured many traditional American allies, including Germany and France, to fulfill their obligations in NATO. His policies have strengthened NATO while preventing European nations from freeloading off the United States.
“Not even the United States is strong enough to protect itself on its own,” they wrote. “Cooperating with like-minded nations to sustain an international order of mutual security and prosperity is a cost-effective way of securing that help.”
Trump sough relationships with all nations, not just “like-minded nations” that are willing to submit to the globalist international order.
Mattis served as Trump’s defense secretary from January 2017 until January 2019.
While in that position, he undermined Trump’s efforts to withdraw troops from endless wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Mattis said the incoming administration should continue nation-building in countries whose populations resent American involvement.
They wrote that “to dismiss U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere as ‘endless’ or ‘forever’ wars – as both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden do – rather than as support to friendly governments struggling to exert control over their own territory misses the point.”
He encouraged Biden to stay indefinitely in the Middle East.
“It is in the United States’ interests to build the capacity of such governments to deal with the threats that concern Americans; that work isn’t quick or linear, but it is an investment in both greater security and stronger relationships and preferable to the United States’ indefinitely having to take care of threats on its own,” they wrote.
Shortly after leaving office, Mattis abandoned his statement that suggested he would not attack Trump: “If you leave an administration, you owe some silence.”
He repeated malicious lies regarding Trump’s attempts to calm this summer’s Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots, calling Trump “the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people.”
