Lack of realistic honesty in American leadership — the unfortunately representative James Mattis

© 2017 Peter Free

 

14 June 2017

 

 

Astute honesty, what's that?

 

Secretary of Defense James Mattis manages to hide unrealism behind a facade of seeming honesty.

 

What a leadership disappointment he has turned out to be.

 

 

The former Marine Corps general typifies what we could call the high end of American leadership's (arguably weaseling) lack of quality

 

Consider Secretary Mattis' unrealistically misleading recent statement:

 

 

"We are not winning in Afghanistan right now. And we will correct this as soon as possible," Mattis said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 

Mattis acknowledged that he believed the Taliban were "surging" at the moment, something he said he intended to address.

 

© 2017 Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali, U.S. 'not winning' in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary tells Congress, Reuters (13 June 2017) (paragraph split)

 

 

"We will correct [losing in Afghanistan] as soon as possible"

 

Fourteen American years in Afghanistan, coupled with centuries of previous history there, make it clear that we are not going to win or correct, no matter what we feasibly do.

 

Thus, Mad Dog's (embarrassingly puerile — given his very high rank) sobriquet captures either:

 

 

(a) an evident inability to think based on facts

 

or alternatively,

 

(b) a misleading of Congress for concealed reasons.

 

 

In either circumstance, Secretary Mattis' blatantly unrealistic response — with regard to the future of the Afghanistan War — typifies virtually all things American:

 

 

If it's bad, deny the badness or soothingly pretend that we can magically reverse the irreversible — if only we had more money and unsupervised authority.

 

If it's good, say it's bad — and ask for boatloads of added means to prevent imaginary coming catastrophes.

 

 

The moral? — Truth is a constant victim of today's American way of doing things

 

A realistic and honestly well-meaning person among American leadership would stand out like a Sun-Bright Saint.

 

Provided that we ourselves were clever enough to see the light.