Jim Mattis on Leadership: Notes From the Margins of Call Sign Chaos

The Library Is a Weapon

• If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.
• Mattis has said that when he received orders tied to Iraq, he went back to the history of the region and to commanders who had fought there before. Alexander the Great was one of his anchors, not as a tactical playbook, but as a way to understand terrain, culture, logistics, and the recurring patterns of conquest in Mesopotamia.
• Link to Mattis reading list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/150666.General_James_Mattis_Favorite_Reading_List

Happy Hour

• I liked prodding the young troops. You always learned something. Besides, I enjoyed the pained expressions at staff meetings when I brought up a lance corporal's latest recommendation. If you can't talk freely with the most junior members of your organization then you've lost touch. "How's it going Lance?" "Hoorah fine sir, terrific, living in the dream." I never accepted that stock reply. "That's bullshit. We're stuck in the middle of nowhere when we wanna be killing Al-Qaeda. Level with me. Give me something I can fix."
• I did not rely on the chain of command to bring all important issues to my attention. I let it be known that every Friday afternoon I would be at the club for happy hour. It was in those places that one could hear the elemental passions, the open heart and the bold tongue, and no masks.

Stop Fighting Two Wars at Once

• As the Secretary of Defense he most often had to choose the least bad option. If it was an easy decision with good options, that decision had already been made. The whole experience brought home how critical it is to delegate decision-making authority or face paralyzing chaos.
• We backup our commanders. Whatever they ask for, we deliver immediately. Ask enough questions to clarify what the field commanders need then make sure they get it when they need it. That's our role. Requests shouldn't languish. Our field commanders can't fight a two front war. One against the enemy and the other against us in the rear.
• "A call from the field is not an interruption of the daily routine. It's the reason for the daily routine." — Navy Captain Dick Stratton
• George Washington's leadership philosophy, summarized by Mattis as "listen, learn, help, then lead." He built credibility by staying with his troops, fostering open debate, and prioritizing the welfare of the nation over personal gain.

Ethics Don't Take a Day Off

• General Jim Mattis emphasized maintaining ethical conduct even in the face of brutal combat, arguing that troops can perform rough work without becoming evil.
• From the British officers, I learned a lot. I adopted their approach of showing no triumphalism. We had come to liberate not dominate.
• Do not let the enemy make you hate all Iraqi people.
• Do no harm to your honor.
• Keep training and encouraging local forces, stay professional and polite. Whenever you show anger toward angry civilians it's a victory for the insurgents.
• Chapter 5 live ammo story. Negligence discharge. Junior offenders were busted down one rank and wouldn't carry live ammo the rest of the deployment. We didn't take everyone's live ammo away despite pressure to do so. We own our mistakes, always.

Know Your Enemy

• There is no magic bullet, nor technological breakthrough that will win this fight for us. Empathy may be as important a weapon as an assault rifle.
• if there's something you don't want people to see you ought to reconsider what you're doing. Jim wanted to bring journalists into the fold and even assign them an NCO to help make sure they were protected. He didn't want to repeat what happened in Vietnam when journalists were fed positivity and lies and increasingly became cynical and agitated.
• During a 2004 meeting with Iraqi sheikhs who asked when American forces would leave, Mattis said: "I'm not. I bought a little piece of property on the Euphrates. I'm going to marry one of your daughters and live there."
• No organization has ever transformed without first defining the problem.

Say What You Mean

• A core tenet of his philosophy is that one should never tell the enemy what we will not do. Unless you wanna lose, you don't tell an enemy when you're done fighting. Obama mistakenly did this when he surged 30,000 troops into Afghanistan AND simultaneously announced they'd all be home in 18 months. The Taliban took that as a sign to wait it out.
• Obama told Assad in Syria that the use of chemical weapons was a red line not to be crossed. Assad did it anyway and Obama did nothing about it. It was the shot not heard around the world and made us look weak as a security partner.
• Former Secretary of State George Shultz famously advised that to do a high-level job well, you can't want it too much and must be willing to walk away. This mindset allowed him to prioritize long-term strategy over immediate political survival.

Walk Away Clean

• Jim recommended they disband JIFCOM even though he was the leader of it for two years. It was no longer useful and he knew it. When budget cuts came down he wrote it on a napkin and gave it to the admiral. He saw himself out of a job because it was the right thing to do.
• Mattis resigned from the Trump administration after disagreeing with the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. In his resignation letter, he wrote that the president deserved a secretary of defense whose views aligned more closely with his own, framing his departure as a matter of principle rather than protest.
• When later asked to comment on decisions made by the administration, Mattis declined, citing what he called a duty of reserve. The idea is simple and demanding: when you leave a position over policy differences, you owe restraint rather than public criticism. Loyalty to the institution outweighs the urge to be publicly vindicated. For Mattis, silence was not weakness but discipline.

Attitude Is Caught Not Taught

• Attitudes are caught, not taught.
• The most important six inches on the battlefield are between your ears.
• To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. — Robert E. Lee

Lines That Hit Different

• Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
• I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me I'll kill you all.
• There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them. — Winston Churchill
• Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. — Lyndon B. Johnson
• A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. — Winston Churchill
• Dynamite in the hands of a child is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out. — Winston Churchill
• As officers, you will neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor smoke, nor even sit down until you have personally seen that your men have done those things. If you will do this for them, they will follow you to the end of the world. And, if you do not, I will break you. — Field Marshal Slim
• The object of war is to achieve a better state of peace. — BH Liddell Hart
• Your problems are my problems.