James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, spoke up today at the annual Association of the United States Army (AUSA) in Washington, DC and told our armed forces “to be ready” for North Korea.
“Right now it is a diplomatically led, economic sanctions-buttressed effort to try to turn North Korea off this path,” Mattis said following a speech at the annual convention of the Association of the United States Army in Washington. “Now, what does the future hold? Neither you nor I can say, so there’s one thing the U.S. Army can do, and that is we have got to be ready to ensure that we have military options that our president can employ if needed.”
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“How many times have you seen the UN Security Council vote unanimously, now twice if a row, to impose sanctions on North Korea?” he asked. “The international community has spoken, but that means the U.S. Army must stand ready.”
During his speech, Monday Mattis also referred to a history of early U.S. Army failures during the Korean War in the 1950s, T.R. Fehrenbach’s “This Kind of War.”
The book is a cult classic in some parts of officer corps – and a cautionary tale about military action on the Korean peninsula.
Fielding the question on how to avoid a new war in Korea, Mattis brought up the book again. “You know there’s a reason I recommended T.R. Fehrenbach’s book, that we all pull it out and read it one more time.”
I always enjoy hearing Mattis speak. He rarely holds back and tells it like it is. And he is right but not just about North Korea but for any threats our great nation may face; we need to be ready.
We know there are those out there who simply and literally hate us just for being American, just for being born here. And I doubt any of that unfounded hostility will be going away anytime soon.
