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| Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By: Joe Gould
WASHINGTON — National security scholars urged lawmakers to pass legislation to allow retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to serve as defense secretary under Donald Trump, but they warned about eroding the civilian-military divide.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the civilian-military divide on Tuesday, Eliot Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University said a Secretary Mattis “would be a stabilizing and moderating force, preventing wildly stupid, dangerous, or illegal things from happening.”
Cohen, a top adviser to Bush-era Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has been a vocal Trump critic.
“The president has to have somebody that they will listen to, and I guess I do tend to believe that President-elect Trump will be inclined to listen to Gen. Mattis, and that to me is a very important consideration,” Cohen said.
In an exchange with New York Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, the lone member of the SASC who has voiced opposition to the waiver, Cohen said he believed Mattis could stand up to Trump if he gave an illegal order to use torture.
“As a candidate, the president-elect indicated he would use torture not only against suspected terrorists, but their families,” Cohen said. “It’s not only outrageous, its illegal, its profoundly immoral—and I think Secretary Mattis would refuse to comply, and that’s extremely important.”
Since Mattis retired in 2013, he will need Congress to carve out an exception to national security rules mandating a seven-year “cooling off” period for retired military to take over the top civilian defense job.
Read the full story at DefenseNews