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Dec. 7, 2016
Peter Bergen wrote for CNN about President-elect Trump's pick for Defense Secretary, James Mattis:
In picking Gen. Jim Mattis for Defense secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has said that he found his "Gen. George Patton." Yet that label may not really capture what makes Mattis a distinctive choice. Mattis has been sharply critical of President Barack Obama's policies on Iran, and Obama's capping of troop numbers and campaign end-dates in theaters of war such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Mattis also appears to be a skeptic of the Obama-era policy of putting women into combat roles.
Mattis, 66, is a storied retired Marine general beloved by his troops whose skeptical views on Iran and appetite for a robust military that is unencumbered by political correctness align closely with those of his new boss. But Mattis is also a warrior-intellectual who easily and unpretentiously quotes both the Roman stoic Marcus Aurelius and Eliot Cohen, the Republican military strategist who was a leader of the "never Trump" movement.