Good advice from Mattis and likely will be aggressively ignored. During the Civil War Federal officers regularly stuck their noses into politics often to mask mediocre command performance on their own part. In fact, American officers from the earliest days of the Republic have been intimately involved in politics so the tradition is really one of involvement not separation. The great counter to that activist tradition was of course George Marshall who rightly considered the involvement in partisan politics by officers as both unprofessional and unethical. Basically, it is a matter of ‘character’ something than seems to have less meaning today in our world of influence, publicity seeking and the quest for easy money.

Georgie Patton famously said he did not vote - it was a conflict of interest.

I can't believe you'd insult a beautiful mudpit with insinuations of politics!
..
We've seen an effort to politicize just about everything, to tear down even the _notion_ of independent, professional judgment, not just lament this-or-that failure to meet the standard.
..
One can trace this idea through contemporary American politics. It started as a simple effort to dash the perceived hegemony of various Liberal "mainstream" tenants, but has metastasized to the point that it is often vicious, vacant, or self-defeating...

It's good to see someone at least try to hold the line among the officer corps.

Active-duty flags: no argument. Unaware of who he might have in mind, other than maybe Powell on DADT. Or perhaps Saint David of Petraeus, the Bush Administration's most polished apologist.

Retired flags: this is rampant silliness. The notion that a retired military person should refrain from full participation in the political process of the nation he or she served is ludicrous. Mattis is denying the political service of Grant and Eisenhower, of McCain and Sestak, of the first CO of USS NAUTILUS and a more recent NATO commander. Mattis is flat wrong here.

And here's another quote from Mattis: "Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot… It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling… You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." 'Thoughtful and learned' indeed.

And a Marine Corps flag is an odd person to decry retired generals meddling in politics. The Corps is famous for having a retired USMC flag assigned in each of the 50 states to do the Commandant's bidding in lobbying the state's Congressional delegation on matters of interest to the Marine Corps.

I don't decry this - it works and it has at times helped protect the Marine Corps from some really bad ideas. But that Mattis, of this system and well aware of it, should argue against retired flags involving in political matters: that's hypocrisy, plain and simple. 'Thoughtful and learned' indeed. Phony and mendacious would be more like it.

I know Rubber Ducky is a retired officer. So am I—regular army. To suggest that Ducky or I or any other retired officer, regardless of rank, should be prohibited from participating in the civil affairs of the nation is to relegate us to the status of second class citizens. Being a citizen is far more important than being a miliary officer; we serve for at most half of our lives, but we are Americans for all of our lives. Oh, but you say, "Mattis is limiting it to the most senior officers," presumably because they're the ones most likely to influence a debate. Well, they might also be the most knowledgeable sources at times. The unfortunate reality is that when we're talking many national defense topics, ISTM many Americans might find the opinions of people with some credentials preferable to those of denizens of think tanks and stray pundits on the op-ed pages.

We talk about Iraq being a stupendous blunder, which it was, but we don't recognize that if some retired senior officers had come out and said just that—and many believed it—well, maybe history might have been different. Instead, most took Mattis's advice. The only retired senior officer the American people heard from at the time was Colin Powell, and he got it all wrong, with some of us wondering just how that could have been.

Ducky left out one general whom Mattis would deny involvement in politics following military service: a fellow named Washington, the man who's still considered the greatest president.

I'll also add to Ducky's catch of the Mattis quote about how it's fun to shoot some people. Just what any officer would want to hear from his commanding general when he's trying to control his troops and ensure adherence to the laws of war. Hard enough keeping things straight without having senior officers spew macho BS.

I'd say this "thoughtful and learned" officer needs to follow his own advice and retire from the public eye.

So, the Corps' warrior monk thinks the senior military officer ranks have gotten away from being apolitical and would do well to return to the model set by Gen. George Marshall?

I wonder if this tilt toward public expression of views isn't a result in what is seen by our military as the long growing inexperience in martial matters in Congress and generally across government agencies? Which has further given rise toward looking at those is the senior military ranks as experts on all matters military and geo-political, causing too many in the uniformed service to feel empowered to do so, and do so unchallenged?

If I'm correct, this attitude starts a lot earlier within an officer's career prior to him/her reaching senior field/flag grade, and Mattis might just as well have been talking to everyone in the officer ranks.

Perhaps Gen Matthis is concerned by the Pentagon Military analyst program and the troubling precedent that it poses. The military at present commands a pretty high approval rating in a country with a discredited legislature and executive branch (not my opinion, just the polls). This trust translates into real power and can be manipulated. That said, we also live in a country where a vet in a wheelchair can be characterized as a surrender monkey by a bunch of chickenhawks.

It is true that George Washington was a former officer and a patriot (not perfect, when we consider his self-interested behavior during the Whiskey Rebellion, but still), yet he was no aggressive politically interested militarist such as McArthur, McClellan, or Jackson. Washington was in the mold of Eisenhower and S. Butler. Retired officers have the right to sound off on matters, and it is true that many of the most blood-thirsty former politicians have been civilians, need I name names? Yet I wonder to what extent former officers can be co-opted by the "defense" industry and to what extent they can psychologically separate themselves enough from the Army, Navy, or Marines. Can they be no-longer a retired Marine, but a citizen? Basically, is a lifer capable of making a decision that might be good for the country but which could be characterized as bad for the Corps or former colleagues, or "dishonorable" like to "cut and run"?

no rank is greater neither one with the stars of a general nor one with the scarf of a believer.

We should return to the times when American Generals stayed out of politics when they retire.

Sincerely,
The 12 former Generals:
-George Washington, Revolutionary War
-Andrew Jackson, War of 1812
-William Henry Harrison, War of 1812
-Zachary Taylor, Mexican War
-Franklin Pierce, Mexican War
-Andrew Johnson, Civil War
-Ulysses Simpson Grant, Civil War
-Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Civil War
-James Abram Garfield, Civil War
-Chester Allan Arthur, Civil War
-Benjamin Harrison, Civil War
-Dwight David Eisenhower, World War II

There is world of difference between individuals who take off the uniform and run for office as partisans and those who present themselves as apolitical advisors and commentators. One former four star retired and ran for office as a Democrat and another endorsed a candidate and received a high profile ambassadorship. I'm very comfortable with the first one, the second option... not so much. Some perks of Flag Rank continue on into retirement, the need to consider the appearance of impropriety and its impact on good order and discipline should as well.