Mattis: 'Why I quit Trump'

Former US Defense Secretary James Mattis has said that he had expressed his opposition in a forceful way to President Donald Trump's policies by leaving the Pentagon.

Mattis made the remarks in an interview on Wednesday with MSNBC when asked when officials such as him would begin to forcefully condemn the Trump administration.

"Well, I don't know how I could have spoken more loudly to where I stand [than] when I put in my letter of resignation, and quitting a job when I had not completed it, two years in," Mattis said.

"This isn't about one man and the solution isn't going to be one person speaking out. It's going to be about the majority of Americans saying that's enough, we owe better to the next generation than what we're doing right now," Mattis added.

Mattis resigned from the Defense Department in late 2018 after Trump announced plans to withdraw US troops from Syria, which he strongly opposed.

Trump later backed away from his decision, allowing a portion of the US troops to remain in Syria in what the Pentagon claims as an effort to prevent a resurgence of the Daesh terrorist group.

Mattis is breaking months of public silence as he promotes his new book, “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” which hit the stands on September 3.

Mattis has given a series of media interviews about his time in the administration.

"I want people to understand why I couldn’t stay. I’ve been informed by four decades of experience, and I just couldn’t connect the dots anymore,” he told The Atlantic last week.

“If you leave an administration, you owe some silence," he added at the time. "When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country."

Regarding his reasons for leaving the Trump administration, Mattis offered a more critical explanation than the one he wrote in his resignation letter.

“When my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faith with our allies, no longer resonated, it was time to resign, despite the limitless joy I felt serving alongside our troops in defense of our Constitution,” he wrote in an essay adapted from his new book and published by The Wall Street Journal last week.

Did Mattis quit because Trump was not rabid enough?

“In a word, yes. When Trump first took office - and he was, as you'll recall, under a state of siege - he insulated himself from attack at his base by surrounding himself with generals and other rabid militarists. This was necessary to fend off an attack from the right over his desire to make peaceful relations with Russia. But it was clear to me and to anyone really paying attention that no sane person would want to make peace with Russia and war with everyone else. So it was clear that Mattis and his ilk were there for show, as red meat for the base, and not to make policy,” American journalist and political commentator Don DeBar told Press TV.

“I think that when we saw Trump's approach to North Korea, as it developed, it became clear that the new policy would be more peacefully oriented than the policies of previous administrations. Likewise, policy toward Syria, and even the approach to Venezuela, ham-handed as it may be and brutal as it may be, indicate a turning away from the use of military force to achieve regime change. Again, in that context, Mattis really has no function other than to operate as a scarecrow. And should the scarecrow decide to become self-animated, he is immediately removed from the field,” he added.

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