Mattis’ truth-telling resignation

Resignation letters can be rants. Meltdowns. But mostly they’re boilerplate. One job site advises quitters to be brief, not to burn bridges, and — this above all — “Don’t tell the whole truth in your exit interview.”

For once, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis broke a rule. When the former Marine Corps four-star general and head of Central Command tendered his resignation to President Donald Trump last week, he told the whole truth.

In his elegant, elegiac and deceptively simple letter, Mattis outlined his core beliefs about global security.

The letter merits a close look, but not because it’s brilliantly original. Instead, the brief essay takes a steely tone to reiterate with absolute clarity America’s bedrock commitments in the post-World War II international order.

Protect the free world against expansionist authoritarianism.

Was that so hard? Reasonable people can differ on tactics and some preach isolationism. But Mattis’ line covers even those who prefer to pull in the drawbridges; it is an entirely credible and complete statement of postwar American resolution.

And that’s why Mattis’ letter is a vitally necessary document. It evokes the common sense, wisdom and competence that the American people have been starved for over the last two years. Our upside-down nation has almost forgotten what a disciplined and principled approach to national security sounds like.

(If you want more discipline and principles, read a paper Mattis cites in his letter: “2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States: Sharpening the Military Edge.” It’s thoughtful, thorough, and there’s nothing in it about mafia rats or smocking guns.)

Daily, Americans who deserve better are subject to the president’s onslaught of vile, tweeted gibberish. But in two long years, we haven’t ever heard the White House authoritatively state the nation’s once-firm position on global security.

In plain view, and flamboyantly, Trump has spited our allies and bowed and scraped before authoritarians, including his favorite, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ever-mindful of Trump’s mounting sycophancy to Putin and other autocrats, Mattis discovered last week that he must distance himself from our compromised president.

Unlike Trump, Mattis makes clear, he is not a lost patsy or puppet.

In no uncertain terms, he writes in his defense strategy statement that China and Russia are seeking to control Europe and the Middle East with authoritarian measures and new forms of warfare, including election hacking. These two nations, Mattis writes, pose “the central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security.”

That’s right. The central challenge to peace and prosperity. Not Canada, Europe, CNN or Amazon. What’s more, undernourished asylum-seekers from Mexico and Central America don’t endanger the peace either.

Trump pleased the Kremlin last week by withdrawing troops from Syria and lifting economic sanctions on Putin’s billionaire pal Oleg Deripaska. But what makes the Russian president happy terrifies what’s left of the free world. And, unmistakably, it also terrifies Mattis.