Gen. James Mattis, a former U.S. secretary of defense under former President Donald Trump, this week spoke at a Palm Beach event and urged Americans to put aside their political differences and present a united front to the world as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its 14th day.
“We gather this afternoon here in Florida at a grim time, a time of peril even as the innocent Ukrainian people find their very existence in doubt,” Mattis told more than 470 people at The Society of the Four Arts.
Mattis was Trump’s first national-security appointment and, while Trump at first praised Mattis, the long-time Marine eventually resigned because he didn’t agree with Trump’s policies. The two ended up sparring against each other in the media.
On Tuesday, at The Society of the Four Arts, about three miles north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, Mattis drew a standing ovation after his speech.
“We are encouraging our adversaries to exploit our division and threaten us abroad. We are hurting ourselves and scaring our allies with some of the political antics that shame us in front of our children,” he said. “We need to recognize the peril if we do not come back together.”
Mattis spent 44 years in the Marines, rising from an 18-year-old reservist to the highest rank of four-star general.
Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, who served as U.S. ambassador to Finland from 2001 to 2003 introduced Mattis at the Four Arts.
“He is a committed and devout Catholic,” McElveen Hunter said. “During the Iraqi invasion he also prayed with Gen. John Kelly. The warrior monk nickname was earned because of his bachelorhood and his scholarship and lifelong devotion to the study of war. He is also known for his blunt, sometimes provocative speech including his Mattisisms.”
One of those is, “If in order to kill the enemy, you have to kill an innocent, don’t take the shot. Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.”
Jim Mattis talks about Ukraine in Palm Beach
Mattis, who returned from a security conference in Munich last week and flew to Palm Beach from his home state of Washington, said he discarded his previously prepared remarks about leadership in crisis, and instead decided to focus on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
“Courage and wisdom are needed when we are forced to confront the greatest possible issues,” Mattis said. “We are living in a moment when we must not disguise the ugliness imposed by Putin’s attack and the brutality, he is bringing to us all.
“This earthquake unleashed by Putin’s recently manufactured crisis is one of those weeks when it seems like a decade of change happens in hours,” he said.
Calling Putin “an isolated angry old man menacing the world with his talk of nuclear weapons,” Mattis said the threats cannot be dismissed and are real, but the chances of nuclear weapons being deployed can be reduced and, hopefully, prevented.
Mattis said that so long as western diplomats come together from a position of strength, eventually economics and diplomacy will prevail, but the approach must be firm, measured and strategic.
“We need to put Russia in a box and assure they cannot go further,” Mattis said.
“Eventually what I call the bleeding ulcer will bleed some more, and he will turn to the diplomats. We may have to wait until we have a new president in Russia,” Mattis said. “We are going to have to pull together here and try not to let this spread.”
Mattis: Zelensky cut from the same cloth as Founding Fathers
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky is a courageous leader who is cut from the same cloth and displays the same righteous fury as America’s nations’ founding fathers, Mattis said.
“What an inspiration Zelensky has been. It is such a clear choice between good and evil,” Mattis said. “This exhausted defiant leader reminded the world of our shared human values, the values his valiant people are defending, and noting as he did, that a Russian speaker in Kyiv has more freedom of speech that a Russian speaker in Moscow.”
In Putin’s world view, countries fall into two categories, either a vassal state that will do whatever he tells them, or enemies who live by the United Nation’s charter, Mattis said.
“Putin’s contempt for democracy and his unprovoked assault on a country that was no threat has pressed Russia into a debacle,” Mattis said.
Putin is being proven wrong on every account ─ economically, military and diplomatically, he added.
“He embarked on a costly adventure that has already become a bleeding ulcer on his country’s future,” Mattis said.
Putin wanted a weaker European Union and a fractured North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but instead his actions have strengthened NATO and the EU has implemented economic sanctions against Russia.
The world’s democracies must work together, and no nation alone can secure its borders no matter how many aircraft its navy has, Mattis said.
The words of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who said that peace freedom and security cannot be taken for granted, should be heeded, he added.
Mattis commended U.S. and U.K. intelligence and the CIA’s work in sharing what its spies discovered about Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine, setting the foundation for NATO’s unity of purpose.
Putin’s control of media has Russians ‘hostages to an unacceptable tyrant’
The Russian people, although many of them are brainwashed due to Putin’s hold over the media, must not be forgotten, Mattis said.
“We must keep talking to the Russian people and telling them that we assume they are hostages to an unacceptable tyrant and his coterie of oligarchs and henchmen even as Putin tries to brainwash his people,” he said.
“We have strength no dictator can have if we keep the faith,” Mattis said.
Mattis capped off his military career as head of the U.S. Central Command, where he was in charge of all American forces serving in the Middle East and oversaw operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as parts of Syria, Iran and Yemen.
Mattis and Trump, once united, have sparred with each other
Mattis at first was one of Trump’s most highly praised Cabinet officials. Trump liked to call him by his nickname “Mad Dog,” even claiming he gave him the nickname (he didn’t).
But Mattis resigned in December 2019, explaining that his policy views no longer aligned with Trump’s, specifically over troop withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan.
While he remained silent about Trump for a while, he eventually spoke out, first after people were forcibly cleared from Lafayette Square in Washington so Trump could have a photoshoot, then later after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis told The Atlantic, after the Lafayette Square incident.
Mattis also blamed Trump for the riots at the Capitol, saying: “Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump.” He said Trump uses his role as president to “destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens.”
Trump, for his part, called Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Former Defense Secretary James Mattis gives speech on Ukraine.
