re: Retired Green Beret officer: Mattis "left my men to die."

quote:

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I'm just throwing it out there as something that will come up in the hearing. Maybe he has a reasonable explanation, maybe he fricked up royally, or maybe it's one of those shite happens in war situations. Amerine certainly feels bitter about it, though. I'm sure Mattis will have the votes regardless, but he will have to address it.

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Command in combat is an imperfect science, and that goes thousand-fold when you're making tactical decisions in real time. I've read about this before, and there may be some on here who know more about it, but you must first and foremost understand that you have imperfect information on which to go.

Monday-morning quarterbacking that specific sort of thing is the death of a healthy command.

Given Mattis' aggressive and assertive tactical, operational, and strategic record for his entire career for more than a decade in the Middle East outside of this one instance, I am willing to give him more than a little leeway. If you spend that much time in combat zones, even the Jesus Christ himself would make a tactical mistake or two.

Edit to add: I am also not one to generally give Marines the benefit of the doubt with stuff like this as I tend to think they think a little too much of their abilities and competence, but Mattis' reputation was so good and even Army infantry and SOF respected the absolute hell out of that guy.