Syria, et al

I was asked by a reader to offer up my opinion as a former Marine on the whole Syria/Mattis situation, so here goes.

Trump looked at Syria with an eye towards geo-politics and business. He asked himself "What is the compelling interest of the United States in Syria?" The answer he got was "Nothing at all." I agree.

Mattis, on the other hand, is one of the "Border Wars Boys." Back in the early '80s, many of the flag officers in the Army and Marine Corps noticed an alarming trend: the combat veterans from Vietnam were leaving the service in droves. It was creating a brain-drain for blooded officers and senior staff NCOs. This was especially concerning to them as many thought that Reagan was pushing the Soviets too hard and was at risk of dragging us into another mainland war in Europe, which we would have to fight with a perceived lack of experienced combat officers.

A clique formed within the flag ranks which held that the solution to this problem was to keep the American military involved in a series of "brush wars," with the idea that they could be used as training grounds. It was distantly related to the Roman practice of rotating consuls through border forts to command veteran legions in easy skirmishes against ragged bands of disorganized barbarians. The military usefulness of such a practice, outside of keeping the legions gainfully employed and out of Rome, is debatable, but it certainly helped the career of many a senator with his eyes on bigger political prizes.

Anyhow, this clique among U.S. flag officers, informally referred to as "The Border Wars Boys," believed that the Joint Chiefs should pressure the NCA (a fancy term for the President) to get and stay involved in such low-intensity conflicts when the opportunity presented. Yes, that's where the term originated; "border wars" had unpalatable political connotations, so the term "low-intensity conflict" was coined by the clique; it has since become a cornerstone of military lexicon -- which, of course, was their goal.

James Mattis came up through the military ranks in the period where this clique dominated the war colleges and staff schools. Consequently, he saw Syria differently than Trump. Compelling geo-political interests or no, Syria had the makings of a nice little training ground. With a nominal NATO ally to the north, a conquered province to the east, and Israel to keep the south tied down, it would make a perfect sandbox to rotate the legions through so they could pop off some live rounds at moving targets -- sort of an endless CAX without the homegrown politicos to interfere in your combat exercises. Whatever his personal feelings about the Border Wars philosophy, I am absolutely certain that Mattis was getting enormous pressure from the Chiefs of services and a whole passel of senior flag officers to keep us involved in Syria and Afghanistan. That put him standing squarely between two powerful forces: the military establishment and Donald Trump.

Additionally, I suspect Mattis was just tired. He's a high-energy guy, but SecDef is one of the toughest jobs in the world. Before that, he was a senior flag officer, which is a 20-hour per day job on the best days. Eventually, your tank just runs out of gas, and I think he's been struggling along on fumes for some months now. Trump needs a cabinet who sees eye-to-eye with him on his long range goals and policy. Very much like Reagan, Trump has a specific agenda as President, and anyone who doesn't wholeheartedly support that agenda is likely to find themselves sitting on the curb and clutching a separation package. That's how strong leaders operate; Mattis knows that, because he is one. But he and his boss didn't see Syria the same way, so something had to give. Obviously that something wasn't going to be Donald Trump.

Now please get us out of Afghanistan. It's even less desirable than Syria as a training ground. Enough Border Wars. We have more important things on which to spend our treasure and the blood of the legions.