Posted on 09/23/2007 6:12:56 AM PDT by RedRover
CAMP PENDLETON -- On the eve of his promotion to four-star general and a new assignment, Camp Pendleton's Lt. Gen. James Mattis is being acclaimed by colleagues and observers for his combat command skills and adept handling of troops accused of killing Iraqi civilians.
"I regard him as America's foremost war fighter," Gary Solis, a former Marine judge and prosecutor, said last week. "No general has ever had to deal with so many tough cases at one time and handled them with such skill and aplomb."
Mattis will soon be on his way from Camp Pendleton to an assignment in Washington, D.C.
Bush nominated Mattis for promotion this month and designated him head of U.S. Joint Forces Command, a multiservice umbrella group that oversees planning for 1.6 million troops and develops strategies to fight wars.
Mattis also will become the supreme allied commander of transformation for NATO, overseeing Western Hemisphere defense modernization.
As a combat commander, the general's legacy includes overseeing increased cooperation of Sunni tribal sheiks in Iraq's Anbar province resulting in cooperation with U.S. forces against insurgents and al-Qaida fighters.
At home, he has overseen two large war-crime cases, garnering praise and criticism for his treatment of troops accused of killing Iraqi civilians.
"When it comes to doing what he thinks is right, he doesn't give a damn about what other people think, including the people in the Pentagon," Solis said.
Mattis' reputation as a skilled fighter was earned long before he arrived at Camp Pendleton. He led troops in the 1993 ousting of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and commanded Marine units in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
He also helped design and lead the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, one of the largest and bloodiest of the war.
Mattis, who could not be reached for comment for this story, will undergo a routine Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on his promotion.
He will hand over command of Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps forces throughout the Middle East to Maj. Gen. Samuel Helland, who has been nominated for the rank of lieutenant general.
'True disciple'
Mattis' work as the "convening authority" over civilian death prosecutions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice has generated as much notoriety as his combat commands. He's had sweeping powers as convening authority, and he hasn't hesitated to use them.
Some military attorneys, parent groups and conservative radio and TV talk-show hosts have criticized decisions he has made along the way, including the choice to keep seven Marines and a Navy corpsman in the base brig from the time they returned from Iraq until their trials.
The men, who would all eventually plead or be found guilty, were prosecuted for kidnapping and killing an Iraqi man last year.
Mattis has said privately that keeping those men locked up ahead of trial was probably a mistake.
He also has been attacked for commuting sentences for some of those men and dismissing of charges against other Marines accused in the deaths of 24 Iraqis. Six children and two women were among the dead in the city of Haditha in 2004.
Despite the criticisms, Claude Reinke, a former Marine general who knows Mattis, said Mattis was the right man at the right time.
"He's a true disciple and student of the art of war who has devoted his life to the Marine Corps," said Reinke, publisher of The Californian, an edition of the North County Times. "He has seen it from all angles and he has been the perfect guy for the job of executing a war and overseeing the criminal cases."
'Warrior monk'
A veteran of the first Persian Gulf war, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mattis sometimes is known as "warrior monk," a nickname saluting his combat acumen and intellectual prowess.
Mattis is known as a no-nonsense, salty-tongued "Marine's Marine" who mixes as easily with the brass as with 19-year-old privates charged with carrying out U.S. foreign policy in war.
"I'd march through the gates of hell for Gen. Mattis," said Cliff Carnes, a San Marcos resident and former public affairs officer for the I Marine Expeditionary Force.
One Marine officer said the impact Mattis had on him is immeasurable.
"Working for him was the formative experience of my Marine Corps career," said Maj. Joseph Plenzler, who worked for Mattis during the invasion of Iraq.
Mattis has a hard edge, one that emerges when he's on the battlefield or when he's talking about aspects of the war that trouble him.
In June, during one of three extended interviews with the North County Times in the last year, Mattis decried how enemy bombings in Iraq are reported, particularly when compared to media coverage of the civilian killings by Marines.
"You see the moral bye, the passive voice, given to the enemy's intentional murder," he said. "This is not a rogue unit when the enemy does this, it is a unit actually going out and intentionally firing from a mosque or from a home.
"But when we do it, it's a mistake and we investigate," he added. "Yet for some reason, the moral bye, the passive voice by our media, makes it appear like what the enemy is doing is just an act of God or some goddamned thing, whereas when we do it, it's an ethical lapse. Yet where we have ethical lapses, we have shown ourselves to be accountable."
Pendleton legacy
When Mattis assumed command of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps forces in the Middle East last year, he immediately faced two major challenges.
One was managing troops fighting in the sprawling Anbar province.
The other was overseeing the Haditha and Hamdania prosecutions.
Each put huge demands on the slight-framed, 58-year-old man. Observers say gets by on little sleep and offers his meals to his troops when with them in the field.
"The only thing I ever saw him eat was a candy bar and a Coca-Cola," Plenzler said. "He seemed to run solely on determination."
If he wasn't scurrying from place to place in Iraq and Afghanistan to meet with his field commanders or attending meetings in Washington during the last year, Mattis was ensconced in his office at Camp Pendleton.
From his base headquarters, he dealt not only with all the day-to-day management issues of his command, but also a myriad of complex legal issues stemming from the homicide cases.
The Haditha incident, in which four officers were charged with dereliction of duty and four enlisted men charged with murder, has been extremely sensitive. When it came to light last year, it generated widespread condemnation of the Marine Corps, becoming a rallying point for critics of the war.
Others called the prosecution a witch hunt and criticized the Marine Corps for what U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., last year said on national television was a massacre perpetrated by overstressed troops who "killed in cold blood."
In the Hamdania case, eight Camp Pendleton men were convicted. But only the leader, Staff Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, remains jailed.
In the Haditha case, charges have been dropped against two of four officers. Of the four enlisted men, one had his charges withdrawn in exchange for his testimony and one has had charges dismissed. Resolutions for the two remaining enlisted men are pending.
A mother's story
Last fall, Deanna Pennington wrote Mattis complaining about the prosecution of her son, who was charged in the Hamdania killing.
Her letter implored the general to release Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington, saying his confinement conditions in the base jail were deplorable and the prosecution was rooted in misguided, anti-war politics.
Mattis refused her request, but also told her in his response that "your son is no less in my thoughts than any other Marine or sailor; and in many respects, even more so due to his current circumstances."
Pennington's son pleaded guilty to his role in the slaying of a civilian. Last month, Mattis commuted his eight-year prison sentence and freed him.
Throughout the prosecution of Marines in that case, the outspoken Deanna Pennington never hesitated to sharply criticize Mattis.
She doesn't feel that way anymore.
"He deserves more than anyone to have that star," Pennington said.
Several weeks before her son was let out of jail, Pennington, her husband and their son met with Mattis for nearly an hour.
"I apologized to him for all the criticism," she said last week. "He said that it was OK, that 'You are the mom and it was your job to protect your child.'
"It was the first time I felt like I was treated like a parent of a young man who was willing to lay down his life for his country."
Pennington's attorney, former Marine general David Brahms of Carlsbad, said Mattis has had to balance order and discipline with justice for each of the accused.
"His involvement, insight and sense of balance has been extraordinary -- he's the very model of what a convening authority should do," he said.
Brahms witnessed the discussion between Mattis and the Penningtons. While gentle with the parents, he said the talk with Lance Cpl. Pennington, who had served three tours in Iraq, been wounded twice and lost two best friends, was different.
"It was warrior to warrior," Brahms said.
In the end, Brahms said the war crimes cases required Mattis to "balance the equation to ensure military justice worked and ... that the mothers of America can trust the system will deal fairly with their children."
On Iraq
Mattis has consistently expressed his opinion on what it will take for the U.S. to declare success in Iraq. Like many commanders, he says success will not happen in the country through military might alone.
The slowly maturing Iraqi government has to show it can bring all the factions together and control its own security forces, he has said.
Last year, Mattis said it would take at least five more years of U.S. presence in Iraq to achieve political and military stability.
Faced with an increasingly skeptical Congress and a majority of Americans opposed to continued U.S. presence in Iraq, Mattis called in June for a national dialogue on what the military calls "the long war" of extremist and terroristic threats worldwide.
"The problem of violent extremists existed long before 2003, and it is going to exist long after the next presidential election," he said. "We are going to have to confront it and come up with a national policy.
"We have to recognize that our electoral process may not provide the patience consistent with fighting this sort of war. Sincere, patriotic Americans can disagree, but we have got to come up with an understanding and build consensus for how we are going to address it."
- Entered the Marine Corps in 1972.
- Graduated from the Amphibious Warfare School, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the National War College.
- As a lieutenant, served as a rifle and weapons platoon commander in the 3rd Marine Division. As a captain, commanded a rifle company and a weapons company in the 1st Marine Brigade. As a major, commanded a recruiting station. As a lieutenant colonel, commanded 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, an assault battalion in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991.
- Led invasion force into Afghanistan in November 2001.
- Led Camp Pendleton's 1st Marine Division in invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
- Helped design a battle plan and commanded Marine forces in fight for the city of Fallujah in November 2004, one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq war.
- Chastised by Marine leadership following February 2005 comments in San Diego where he told a military conference "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot, ... It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling." He also said, "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
- Commander of Marine Corps Combat Development Center 2005 and 2006.
- Co-wrote with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus "Small Unit Leaders Guide to Counterinsurgency."
- Named commander of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps forces in Middle East in June 2006 and took over responsibilities in August.
- Served as convening authority over investigations, hearings and trials arising out of alleged criminal actions by Camp Pendleton troops in Hamdania, Haditha and Fallujah in 2006-07.
- Recommended letters of censure subsequently handed down by the secretary of the Navy to a Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Huck and two colonels this month for failing to fully investigate Haditha deaths.
- Nominated this month for fourth star and rank of general and appointment as head of U.S. Joint Forces Command overseeing 1.6 million troops and NATO supreme allied commander for transformation.
This general bares a striking resemblance to a certain WW II three star...
"...Yet where we have ethical lapses, we have shown ourselves to be accountable."
Among the several moving quotes in the article, this highlights that we are held to a higher standard. Why? Because we hold ourselves to a higher standard? Why? Because, like Israel, this nation was called to a higher standard.
or cadavers on TV shows! God Bless you General Mattis.
Sounds like a lullaby to this Mother, Brahms. I'm sleeping with one eye open.
It's outrageous, hypocritical, and disgusting to deny freedom to- and/or espouse that we hold men on the ground under threat of attack and literal attack- accountable
...while a sitting congressman has the freedom to slander them and aid and abet their attackers.
MATTIS PING
DAMMIT, how did I miss that??? I thought I beat you :(
Just in case anyone takes that the wrong way, let me add:
accountable for doing what is necessary to come home alive.
LOL!
Yeah, yeah.....
They LOVE firemen, too. As long as they NEVER EVER put out a fire!
Excellent article by Mark Walker, I believe it reflects on Lt. Gen. Mattis as it should in a professional and favorable way. The general is a fine Marine and has done an exemplary job, IMO.
Mark Walker did an excellent job on this piece. Walker either heavily edited Gary Solis’ comments or he must have gotten some meds. Solis actually makes sense in this article.
I do think Gen Mattis got extremely bad advice from his legal staff at Pendleton. The buck stops with the general, but his staff let him down as well.
At least we shall have a Marine General moving to the Pentagon that has a good grasp on what shall have to be done in the years ahead regarding the GWOT.
I noticed that also, Red. Solis must have had a relapse by not putting his negative opinion in the interview.
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