Write a professor emeritus of international affairs and two retired Army colonels:
The president used America’s military forces [on the southern border] not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election outcome, an unprecedented use of the military by a sitting president….
The president crossed a line — the military is supposed to stay out of domestic politics….
The deployment is a stunt, a dangerous one, and in our view, a misuse of the military that should have led Mr. Mattis to consider resigning, instead of acceding to this blatant politicization of America’s military.
Well, that's the question, isn't it: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind of Mattis to suffer this outrageous president, or to take arms against Trump's sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?
All we can know is that Mattis' resignation would not end this president's sea of troubles, for that phrase is his middle name: He is all trouble, at all times. He thrives on it, and his squalid base loves him for it. What we can speculate on is, merely, whether it's nobler for Mattis to resign.
The veteran military correspondent Thomas Ricks once confronted this question, although then it was about National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Initially, Ricks believed it was advisable for experienced advisers to stick around. "My thinking was that the more mature, thoughtful people we had in the administration, the better," he wrote. "I have come to think I was wrong. I no longer believe in the 'adults in the room' theory of containing President Trump and the similarly erratic and ignorant people around him."
Ricks' reasoning was essentially self-evident. "I have watched and waited, and I don’t see McMaster improving Trump. Rather, what I have seen so far is Trump degrading McMaster. In fact, nothing seems to change Trump."
Ricks wrote that more than a year-and-a-half ago. I don't know if he has again changed his mind, but I find myself endlessly vacillating. One day it seems just as self-evident that thoughtful presidential advisers are only a waste of good personnel, and on another day I thank Providence for the likes of Mattis on duty. But in either case, Ricks remains correct. Trump mostly degrades any thoughtful adviser.
Today I'm inclined to believe the defense secretary should resign. Of what value was his almost certain protest of Trump's idiotic, characteristically demagogic decision to deploy troops on the border? None, of course. On the other hand, might Mattis be able, someday, to persuade this idiotic president to not do something far more idiotic? Perhaps. So maybe Mattis shouldn't resign.
Tomorrow, I might reverse. I confess to a doomed wistfulness. I'd like to see the three or four of Trump's thoughtful advisers out of hundreds walk mini-en masse right out of the White House in final disgust of his imbecility, incompetence, malfeasance, recklessness and mean-spiritedness. Would we be better off? Again, that is the question.