Quotes from a General

President Trump fired him (after he submitted his resignation) and earlier this week reportedly called him "the world's most overrated general," but former Defense Secretary James Mattis had a few barbs of his own to sling in a speech he gave in New York on Thursday.

Delivering the keynote address at the 75th Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York, James Mattis — a retired four-star U.S. Marine general — said he felt he had finally "achieved greatness."

"I'm not just an overrated general, I am the greatest, the world's most overrated," he said to laughter.

"I'm honored to be considered that by Donald Trump, because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress," Mattis continued. "So, I guess I'm the Meryl Streep of generals. Frankly that sounds pretty good to me."

"I earned my spurs on the battlefield ... Donald Trump earned his spurs in a letter from a doctor," he said in a reference to a medical deferment for bone spurs that kept Trump from serving in the military during the Vietnam War.

But Mattis quickly moved on from the jokes and picked up a more serious tone, citing a speech that Abraham Lincoln gave in 1838 to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Ill.

In it, Lincoln "observed great nations crumble for one of two reasons," the first being foreign invasion, Mattis said, which the future president dismissed as "inconceivable."

The second, he said, paraphrasing Lincoln, "was corrosion from within – the rot, the viciousness, the lassitude, the ignorance."

"Anarchy is one potential consequence of all this. The other is the rise of an ambitious leader, unfettered by conscience, or precedent or decency, who would make himself supreme," he said.

In conclusion, Mattis again paraphrased Lincoln, this time that president's famous Second Inaugural speech, delivered in the closing days of the Civil War: "With malice for none and charity for all, let us restore trust in one another."

— Condensed from www.npr.org  10/17/2019