General James Mattis: The Knuckle-Dragging Buffoon

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
February 8, 2005

"It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
A General as Knuckle-Dragging Buffoon
By BRIAN CLOUGHLY

In using the description 'knuckle-dragging buffoon' I am of course referring directly (but far from exclusively) to the loutish Lieutenant General James Mattis, a US Marine officer who has been grossly over-promoted from latrine orderly. Recently he disgraced his country, his uniform and the Profession of Arms by boasting that he is a brutal thug. To remind you, what he said concerning his personal military ethos was : "Actually, it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people, I'll be right up front with you. I like brawling . . . You go into Afghanistan, you've got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway, so it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." These were his public words. They make me wonder what this man (I use the word loosely) might really think about in the depths of his diseased and malevolent mind.

Of course he has not suffered in the slightest for his glorification of killing. The official whitewash brush was wielded immediately after his announcement that he considers it a hell of a lot of fun to do the thing he thinks he is good at.

It was this same Mattis who dismissed photographic evidence of the slaughter of dozens of people by US forces at an Iraqi wedding party last year. The wedding took place in western Iraq, and Mattis denied there had been an atrocity. He said he could not understand how a wedding could take place in the desert, so he blitzed the gathering. He did not know that the desert is home to thousands of families, settled and nomadic, who have relatives and friends in villages, towns and cities, and that these people come to visit on occasions of celebration or grief. The man betrayed his appalling ignorance of the culture and customs of the country by exclaiming "Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don't be naïve. Plus they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party?".

Thousands of them throughout the year, you poor dumb cluck.

Can you imagine it? -- "It's fun to shoot some people" giggles an American general, and there is "laughter and applause" from his audience. Are these real people? It is difficult in this supposedly civilized era to believe that two hundred citizens of an advanced western country would laugh and clap their hands when a general declares he thinks it fun to shoot people. It happened in Nazi Germany when fascist functionaries described what they had done or would do to Jews. Now it happens in America when a government functionary describes what he has done to Afghans. None of the audience spoke out later, apart from retired Vice Admiral Edward H Martin who said "I don't think any of us who have ever fought in wars liked to kill anybody". He appears to have been the only human being in the whole gathering. What on earth has America come to?

But on February 7 Rumsfeld said that "the matter is closed" concerning his paranoic general. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Hagee, issued a statement saying "Lt. Gen. Mattis often speaks with a great deal of candor. I have counseled him concerning his remarks and he agrees he should have chosen his words more carefully." More carefully? How can you be 'more careful' about saying you get a kick out of killing people?

http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley02082005.html

[liberal N proud]

1. In the bu$h regime, he will not suffer, quite the opposite

He will most likely get promoted.
Wouldn't surprise me to see him in the Joint Chiefs