Why former Defense Secretary Mattis breaking his silence should terrify us all

U.S. Marine Corps General and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis broke his silence Wednesday.

He released a letter that decried the “consequences of three years without mature leadership” and rejected the musings from the Trump Administration about calling out active duty troops to deal with the George Floyd protests.

Many praised Mattis for speaking out, but others criticized his 18 months of silence since resigning in protest from the Defense Department.

Why he stayed silent, and why he chose this moment to speak out, are likely rooted in one of the most venerable and important traditions in American democracy — civilian control of the military.

The concept is simple: The armed forces of a country are to serve the elected political officials and carry out their orders. Military officers provide advice and the benefit of their particular expertise, but at the end of the day their job is to carry out the political objectives of their country through military means.

This is why the highest commanding military officer is not the head of a service branch but rather the president of the United States in his constitutionally designated role as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces.

It is why Congress, and not the military and not even the president, has the power to raise and fund armies and declare war. The tools of warmaking lie with the elected civilian government, not with the military itself.

It can be difficult to fully understand this concept or the seriousness with which members of the military regard it.

Soldiers are not to engage in political activity while in uniform nor publicly criticize elected officials, lest they be seen as challenging their civilian leaders. (They are allowed to offer their own military opinion, which can sometimes lead to this line being blurred.)

Retired senior military officials often refrain from openly engaging in politics at all, lest their opinions influence active duty soldiers who might have served under the retiree and who are trained to respect and heed superior officers, even when no longer in service.

The idea of civilian control of the military is the very reason why Mattis needed Congress to grant a waiver from a law requiring a gap of seven years between active duty and serving as defense secretary.

Mattis resigned from that post in protest of President Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, but he did not publicly criticize the president’s actions. Nor did he speak up against the administration in the 18 months after his resignation.

Now he has.

Mattis did not simply breach the code of silence and openly criticize the president or the administration’s response to recent events. His letter rebuked the president by name, accused him of not trying to unite the American people, and stated that “we must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”

Why would Mattis choose this moment to break his silence and a powerful democratic norm?

To have spoken out in such a forceful way means that he has judged the threat to the Constitution and the nation itself posed by Trump and his administration is greater than the threat posed by eroding civilian control of the military.

It means that he sees the actions of current Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who encouraged governors to respond to protests by “dominating the battlespace,” and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who accompanied Trump on the fateful walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church, as undermining the fundamental principle that American soldiers are not to be used for domestic law enforcement except under the most extreme circumstances.

It means that Mattis is terrified for the present and future of the United States.

And that should terrify us all.

Seth Weinberger is a professor of politics and government at the University of Puget Sound in Central Tacoma. Reach him by email at sweinberger@pugetsound.edu