https://www.wsj.com/articles/mattiss-pyr...1487894275

...President Trump promised to rebuild our hollowed-out military, a cause as urgent as any domestic priority. Years of Obama budget cuts and neglect slashed force sizes and provoked a readiness crisis. Over half the Navy’s aircraft are grounded. Of 58 Army brigade combat teams, only three are ready to immediately join a fight. The Air Force is short pilots and aircraft maintenance workers.

Mr. Trump chose a man singularly gifted to take on such a huge challenge. “Mad Dog” Mattis is a highly intelligent and revered Marine, whose time on the battlefield has made him intimately familiar with the needs of a fighting force. He’s a steely-eyed warrior who’ll fight for the rebuild mission, and who is willing to speak truth to his boss and Congress about what it will require. That is, if he will stand down long enough to get the project started.

Because right now, Mr. Mattis is fighting alone in the Pentagon, a situation of his own design. He was confirmed on Inauguration Day, yet as March approaches the White House hasn’t nominated a single subcabinet position in the Defense Department. No deputy secretary. No undersecretaries. No assistant secretaries. This is because Mr. Mattis is battling with the White House over who gets the jobs.
The president’s final goal is to issue more regulatory rules and executive orders than the new administration could ever find time to repeal.

A soldier first—a politician only by presidential request—Mr. Mattis hews to the honest belief that defense should always be a bipartisan cause. He wants to choose his own team based on the strength of their views, political affiliations be damned. He wanted, for instance, former Obama undersecretary Michèle Flournoy for a top post. He’s looked to recruit from Ms. Flournoy’s liberal-hawk think tank, the Center for New American Security. And he’s pushed for some names who hail from Never Trump backgrounds, including Mary Beth Long, an official in George W. Bush’s Pentagon.

Perhaps only to make a point, Mr. Mattis is blocking some rock-star conservative talent. One is Mira Ricardel, a former Boeing executive and Bush Pentagon alum who helped with the Trump transition. Mr. Mattis continues to nix a long list of names offered by the White House team.

This defense secretary has one of the biggest jobs in the administration, and he’s right to want to be consulted and to have a team he trusts. There’s also nothing wrong with looking outside the partisan box.

At the same time, Mr. Mattis surely understands the chain of command. This isn’t just a question of choosing random “staff.” These are presidential appointments for consequential positions, with authority over budgets, personnel and operations. The Trump White House has a right to want people it trusts as much as it trusts Mr. Mattis. The former Marine is accorded influence. The president is accorded the call.

The bigger point is the damage this standoff is inflicting—short and long term. The Pentagon today remains in the hands of Obama holdovers who have spent years thwarting congressional requests, minimizing readiness problems, and generally covering for Obama failures. Those holdovers include Deputy Secretary Robert Work, an opponent of reform, and Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Stephen Hedger.

Mr. Hedger helped write an infamous 2016 Pentagon memo outlining how the Obama administration could use a presidential veto of greater defense spending as a “weapon” to get other Obama priorities. Civil servants are also place-warming other key positions. As well-intentioned as many are, it’s unrealistic to expect this crew to march in a new direction after eight years under President Obama.

Congressional reformers such as House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry are warning that the obstruction continues. The frustrated Texas congressman was recently driven to tweet that while Mr. Trump’s commitment to rebuilding was “100% right” and that he couldn’t have a “better leader” than Mr. Mattis, the Trump promise “is facing Obama holdovers @DOD who have been fighting against rebuilding & are still undermining agenda.”

Here’s the bigger problem: Mr. Mattis’s own standing. The former general is about to go into the policy fight of his life, and he’ll need all the political capital he can muster. Getting crosswise with the White House over personnel, and leaching credibility now on controversial nominees the White House clearly doesn’t want and who aren’t integral to victory, makes no sense.

Mr. Mattis may not come out of his personnel fight “utterly ruined” (to quote King Pyrrhus), but he’ll likely be weaker than necessary. And right now the country, and the military Mr. Mattis has promised to restore, needs a defense secretary operating at full and unquestioned strength.

Gen. Mattis will get it going. COUNT ON IT.

He's not a hardnosed JARHEAD SUCCESS FOR NOTHING.

Semper Fi ... MAD DOG.

CAN DO ! ! !