How James Mattis Tried to Explain Trump to the World

The stifling heat of the tarmac beneath the wings of his C-17 aircraft, the dragon’s breath backwash from nearby helicopters, and the unmistakable, acrid smell of summertime Baghdad must have brought back distant memories when Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis touched down there earlier this week. Like many of his peers, Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, came of age as a field commander in the Afghan and Iraq wars, earning his nickname of “Mad Dog” as the commander of 1st Marine Division during the 2003 invasion, and in the subsequent fierce battles for Fallujah. A keen student of history, he popularized the division’s motto “no better friend, no worse enemy,” paraphrasing a maxim attributed to Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

All these years later, Mattis was returning to Iraq at a hopeful moment, with U.S.-backed Iraqi forces having recently recaptured the city of Mosul from the Islamic State after months of bloody urban fighting. Just the night before his arrival in Baghdad, President Donald Trump had also announced additional U.S. forces for the Afghan war and a new strategy formulated by Mattis, National Security Adviser and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs. Trump’s tight circle of generals, which includes John Kelly, the White House chief of staff and a retired Marine four-star general, aims to reclaim an inheritance that the U.S. military fought and bled for, which the generals believe was nearly squandered