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“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you. Any commander who claims he is ‘too busy to read’ is going to fill body bags with his troops as he learns the hard way.”
— Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, writing in his new memoir.
“I don’t know how I could have spoken more loudly to where I stand than when I put in my letter of resignation, and quitting a job when I had not completed it, two years in.”
— Former Defense Secretary James Mattis, on Morning Joe, when asked why he won’t issue a forceful condemnation of President Trump.
“Unlike in the past, where we were unified and drew in allies, currently our own commons seems to be breaking apart. What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness. We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions.”
— Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis speaks out for the first time since resigning his post in a Wall Street Journal essay.
