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Mattis resignation protest at Trump’s decisions: Analyst

Friday, 21 December 2018 3:25 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 21 December 2018 3:29 PM ]

US Defense Secretary James Mattis’ resignation is not surprising, says an analyst, adding that he is seeking to portray his resignation as a protest at President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

Mattis finally announced his long-anticipated resignation on Thursday, saying in his resignation letter that he was stepping down so Trump could have a defense chief whose views align more closely with his own.

His departure had been anticipated since Trump announced on Wednesday that he was withdrawing US troops from Syria despite opposition from US allies and top US military officials.

“I don’t think there is anything surprising about these developments at all. In fact it has been speculated for a long time that he was going to be fired. We were expecting months ago for him to be fired. So the fact that he is resigning now is not a surprise at all,” Barry Grossman told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

“His statement in resigning is interesting as far as it goes but I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. He remained in his office obviously because he was there to do a job, a job which did not necessarily involve implementing the directions given to him by his commander-in-chief. He clearly now has great difficulty with Trump’s latest decision to withdraw both from Syria and Afghanistan and he is trying to portray his resignation as some kind of a protest of that decision,” he added.

Mattis joins a long list of former Trump administration senior figures who have either quit or been removed, some unceremoniously like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who Trump fired via Twitter in March.

Trump's White House has had the highest turnover of senior-level staff of the past five presidents, according to the Brookings Institution think tank.