Call Sign Chaos

by Jim Mattis

After a rebellion, however, power tends to flow to those most organized, not automatically to the most idealistic.

Rebellions, no matter how idealistic in origin, can as often as not produce chaos that often leads to tyranny.

In determining how to deal with a hostile and powerful England in 1807, President Jefferson wrote, “What is good in this case cannot be effected. We have, therefore, only to find out what will be least bad.” That struck me as sound advice during the Arab Spring.

Expecting countries with no democratic tradition, only recently coming out from under the yoke of colonialism, to embrace democracy at the level demanded by some in Washington was based on a wholly unrealistic view about the pace of cultural change.

“Dynamite in the hands of a child,” Winston Churchill wrote, “is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.”

History is not some great, inanimate river determining its own unchangeable course down the centuries.

Aristotle wrote. “People come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just. By doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled, and by doing brave acts, we become brave.”

Our military exists to deter wars and to win when we fight. We are not a petri dish for social experiments.

If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead. History lights the often dark path

If you can’t be additive as a leader, you’re just like a potted plant in the corner of a hotel lobby: you look pretty, but you’re not adding substance to the organization’s mission.