Anyone else really hoping these two end up as SecState and SoD? I think we're playing a fairly narrow game right now when it comes to foreign policy and- especially during post-Cold War presidents- have a pattern of not really picking the people who're competent, aware of our actual resource constraints, and good at channeling our resources to lead State/Defense. Especially State- the systematic failures and "haha fuck our own protocols" in the OIG Report makes State look really, really pathetic.

Petraeus and Mattis are both insightful, competent, and have enough analytic ability/knowledge to know when they should draw a "red line" and tell the other guy to fuck off + when they should play it safe. No stupid over-commitments of our resources that we can't really enforce (Obama's red line in Syria), no more stupidly playing it safe for political points. Just people who know what they're doing.

IMHO, Trump deserves a lot of credit if he ends up going with the Petraeus-Mattis combo. I wouldn't trust the other options to really manage the foreign policy situation we're dealing with right now.

I don't know much about these names but wtf are these names lol I thought you were talking about some Roman myth, esepcially "Petraeus" - I know that's more a Greek name but the Romans loved Greeks and who the f is named "Petraeus" today?

I like Mattis. He is old and military. SeemsGood Kappa