Retired Marine Corps general Jim Mattis’s confirmation hearing was such a breeze that even the Code Pink protesters in the room didn’t say a peep. The anti-war activists who had disrupted Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions’ hearing on Tuesday by ranting about racism and the KKK only protested Mattis silently, raising their hands to hold up a peace sign from time to time.
Throughout the hearing, Mattis was treated to bipartisan praise. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain announced at the start that he couldn’t be happier that Mattis had been nominated. “I think you’re going to be an extraordinary defense secretary,” Ted Cruz told Mattis. The Texas senator then told a story about how excited his chief of staff, a former Marine, had been when Mattis visited Cruz’s office. “If Elvis Presley had walked into the office, he wouldn’t have been more thrilled than to see you walk in, General.”
Senator Tim Kaine, the Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee, said that Mattis’s decision to write a book on civil-military relations “speaks particularly to your suitability to a waiver” from the law barring military veterans from serving as defense secretary within seven years of retirement. (The Senate voted overwhelmingly after the hearing to grant the waiver.) And Angus King, an independent senator from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said: “General Mattis, one of the comments you made earlier about fear, honor, and interest are the bases of all wars is now in my telephone. If it ever gets hacked, they’ll find that quote along with those of Lincoln and Churchill. So thank you for that thought.” (Mattis was too polite to inform the senator that the thought about “fear, honor, and interest” was actually from Thucydides.)
The only senator to have a contentious exchange with Mattis was New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who pressed the retired general about his past comments opposing the full integration of women into combat units. Mattis is popularly known for his blunt and colorful comments, and in recent years he has spoken and written publicly about how integrating women into ground combat units would harm military effectiveness.
“The idea of putting a woman in there is not setting them up for success,” Mattis said in a 2014 speech. “It would only be someone who never crossed the line of departure into close-quarters fighting that would ever even promote such an idea.”
Mattis explained in that 2014 speech to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that even if women could meet the physical standards, integration of the sexes in the infantry would harm unit cohesion. “Could we find a woman who could run fast enough? Of course we could. Could you find a a few who could do the pullups? Of course we could. That’s not the point. That’s not the point at all. It is whether or not you want to mix eros. Do you really want to mix love, affection, whatever you want to call it, in a unit…? Some of us aren’t so old that we’ve forgotten at time’s it was like heaven on earth to hold a certain girl’s hand.” Mattis’s thoughts are commonplace among the men and women who have served in the military, but they’re very politically incorrect among members of Congress.
When Mattis was questioned about his past comments by Gillibrand on Thursday, his answers were so, shall we say, diplomatic and nuanced that competing headlines emerged. “[Mattis] Backs Women in Combat,” declared Military.com. “Defense nominee Mattis won’t say if women and LGBT people should be able to serve,” according to the left-wing ThinkProgress.
Both headlines were wrong. Mattis does not oppose women serving in the military. “In 2003, I had hundreds of Marines who happened to be women, serving in my 23,000-person Marine division, and this is 10 years before I retired, and I put them right into the front lines alongside everyone else,” he told Gillibrand.
But Mattis did leave the door open to reversing the Obama administration’s policy on women in infantry units. Mattis said he has “no plan” to reverse the Obama administration’s policies “unless a service chief brings to me something where there’s a problem that’s been proven, then I’m not going in with an idea that I’m going to review these and right away start rolling something back.”
When Gillibrand asked Mattis if he believed allowing LGBT Americans or women to serve undermines the military’s lethality, Mattis replied: “Frankly, senator, I’ve never cared much about two consenting adults and who they go to bed with.”
“So the answer is no?” Gillibrand asked.
“Senator,” Mattis replied, “my concern is on the readiness of the force to fight and to make certain that it’s at the top of its game so when we go up against an enemy … they will be at their most lethal stance. That’s my obligation as I move into this job.”
It’s not clear what, if anything, Mattis will do on the issue of women in combat, but he certainly left himself room to make a change if a change is necessary. No woman has yet been able to complete the Marine Corps infantry officer course, and the first three female enlisted Marines joined the infantry just this month. If physical standards are maintained, it’s not clear that there will be much of a problem for any of the service chiefs to bring to Mattis.
But if Mattis does determine that any of the Obama administration’s social policies are harming military effectiveness, he gave every indication that he’s ready and willing to change them. Ted Cruz expressed concern that “sometimes a political agenda at the Pentagon has gotten in the way of the warrior ethos” and asked Mattis: “Can you describe for this committee the importance of the warrior ethos and why that matters to keep this country safe?”
“The primitive and often even atavistic elements of the battlefield test the physical strength, the mental agility of everyone,” Mattis replied. “But most of what it tests is the courage and the spiritual side of the troops we put in harm’s way. Often times, it’s only unit cohesion, leadership, and the belief in themselves and their comrades that allows them to go through what they have to go through.”
“The warrior ethos is not a luxury,” Mattis concluded. “It is essential when you have a military.”
