Me if my tie was fixed but ok. I dont consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Games right . Ays no have most people i interviewed are people i have known for quite some time. In the case of jim mattis, i have never met the man before. I thought i better be careful when he i shook his hand but it was the opposite. I recognized quickly he has a certain reserve, a certain manner that would take someone want to follow him as a leader. I suspect had he never gone into the military would have been successful in business, politics as well. Great potential to be a leader in our country. You are minding your own business after having spent 40 plus years in the marines. You are in your native state of washington and you get a call from Vice President elect pence to come and meet donald trump. Before. Never met him what did you think that meeting was about and do you have any regrets about going to the meeting . [laughter] david or your decision to become secretary of defense . Gen. Mattis i do not live a life of regrets. If you are enjoying life shortly after an election and the phone rings, do not answer the phone. [laughter] gen. Mattis i was brought up i the greatest generation. I was brought up to believe that Government Service is an honor, privilege, but it is a duty. The president of the United States that asks you, whether he is a democrat or a republican, if you know you can do it, the response is affirmative. David any regrets about having resigned . Gen. Mattis you will all understand these are the finest young patriots in our country signing that blank check payable to all of us with their lives, the men and women of our being back. I love it is the best job i could have imagined. I miss being around those people. I do not live a life of regrets. There comes a time when you know what you have got to do. David you never look back . Gen. Mattis i look forward like dallas. [applause] that. I wish i could do i always look back on the deals i should have done. I wish i have had that same ability but ok [laughter]. You but ok. [laughter] president eed with trump on syria by you have been careful not to criticize President Trump in a public forum since you resigned. I probably will not persuade you to do that here about the reason you dont want to comment on your service as secretary of defense is what . Is it because you are a former cabinet officer . Gen. Mattis i resigned over a policy disagreement, you are right. I put that disagreement in a page and a half letter. The letter has been released. The french call it a duty of reserve, a duty of quiet. You do not need to have a former secretary of defense talking about the current policies in a way that is injurious to the country. Out that secretary asked carter under the Obama Administration did the same , myg secretary carter predecessor under the Obama Administration did the same thing. It is not some protective effort around President Trump. David years down the road you might feel better about commenting . Gen. Mattis it is a good question, but i am from the west. There is something called your ride for the brand. I could always come out and say on this point strategy i come out like this. There,he president is the last thing we want is to have the former secretary of defense coming out and saying quote i disagree with a certain i disagreeying with a certain policy. The president is still the commanderinchief. Trump call president you for advice anymore or not so much . Gen. Mattis the phone has not wrong on that one. [laughter] david you have recently come out with a book and it is a terrific book. I highly recommend it. Explain what callsign chaos means . Gen. Mattis i was a colonel in the mojave desert. Brooklynofficer from with a rather droll sense of humor. I had brilliant idea, talking to this officer out in the mojave desert. I saw on his whiteboard chaos written. I asked him what that meant. He said you dont have to worry about that. Oh yes i do. I used my powers of persuasion i waterboarded him. [laughter] my callsign should be chaos. It was rather tongueincheek. They did not see the brilliance of all my ideas so i adopted that as my callsign. Any time you hear about this mad dog thing, my troops all laughed at it knowing my callsign was chaos. That was never my favorite nickname. Ae press assigned it to me on slow news day. David you never used the expression mad. You never explained how you got it. You obviously dont like it. Gen. Mattis the marines teach you to be tough in other ways than selfaggrandizing stuff like that. [applause] gen. Mattis one thing i have had to do and you will understand this, i sign a lot of next of kin letters and the last thing they need is someone with the selfimage of mad dog up there with their sons life in his hands. I shy away from those words. David you have signed more than 800 of those letters daca letters . Gen. Mattis i have. David you have been very involved in meeting with goldstar families. Emotionalbe a very experience. Gen. Mattis this great big experiment we have that you and i call america, it is noisy going to need to be defended. We need this commitment, this devotion to our country. David your first time in combat was when Saddam Hussein invades kuwait. When you got into kuwait, were you surprised at how easy it was to get there . Gen. Mattis it was a lot of trading and fire support. I am very proud of that campaign because the last time i brought everyone home alive. David when you started, you started in the northwest. You were a great athlete or a great student . Say . Would you say daca gen. Mattis none of the above. David you are pretty wild. When you were 13 years old your parents would let you hitchhike around the midwest. Gen. Mattis i maintained a degree of silence about my activities around my parents. It was a more trusting nation in those days. My parents were rather adventurous. They were not irresponsible. Had they known some of this they probably wouldve been the put the kabash on it. David were you drafted . Did you say i would rather be in the marines rick then the navy . Than the gen. Mattis i probably would have been drafted. It was assumed if you went into the military my brother was in vietnam as a marine. It was a natural thing. It wasnt a very reflective or examined decision. David so you go into the marines. What was your first assignment after officer training . Gen. Mattis Second Lieutenant in the infantry. You have a 40 sailors and marines into there is no one between you and your troops. You live among them. You can spot them 200 yards away by their walk. It is a great, tightknit crew. Time in combatst was when Saddam Hussein invades kuwait and president bush, 41 decides the u. S. Will have a response. Nonow the 28 countries have choice but to drive saddam from kuwait by force. David what was your involvement and what did you do in that war . Gen. Mattis i commended the infantry battalion. Those of you who remember will remember the big mine fields the trenches of oil. Barbed wire. My battalions job was to open two routes through for the marines to follow. David there were predictions there would be tens of thousands of american troops killed. When you got into kuwait, were you surprised at how relatively easy it was to get in there . Gen. Mattis it was a lot of trading and fire support. I am proud of that campaign because that was the last time i brought everyone home alive. David you get special treatment in that combat. You sleep in the same place as the troops or do get a better . Lace to sleep daca sleep gen. Mattis in the infantry you always eat last. Live it better than the troops. Determined the level of comfort of all troops. If a Lance Corporal has nothing but a blanket, no one has anything but a blanket other than the wounded and the sick. Everyone lives like a Lance Corporal. David so the food you eat is that any good . Gen. Mattis it is not quite as good as the meal we had today. [laughter] david eventually you get back into combat again because 9 11 occurs. Your next assignment is to go into afghanistan and capture Osama Bin Laden. There,ttis you go over david you go over there, you have all the troops, why didnt you capture Osama Bin Laden . Gen. Mattis theyre going to fall back on kandahar. You get the pacific and mediterranean fleets together. I was a one start marine and move against konta harr. Kandahar. They said Osama Bin Laden was in one of two valleys. They were very sure of this. I had a very quick computer study done and i knew which mountains on the pakistan border if you put troops on them could see each other and block the two valleys. I was going to move my troops up the two valleys but i changed from navy commandandcontrol to army commandandcontrol and i had not spent the time getting to know my boss and we missed to the opportunity. The person who made the mistake was me. To geted we were there the same guy we all had the same intel. They told me to pull back. We did not pull back. David ultimately you leave afghanistan and come back to the u. S. Again but then you are asked to go into another war in iraq. Ultimatelythere and the fights between the sunnis and shiites turn out to be more than anyone expected. When you look at the political happened in iraq, what could have been done better in hindsight . Gen. Mattis it is interesting to get the question look back in hindsight, but let me tell you what it looked like in foresight. Iraqe hot summer of 2003, had fallen. On of my briefs one day, a young officer who is briefing by the way, the enemy is picking it up that somehow we are going to disband the iraqi army. We are just bringing the iraqis back into their barracks. We are trying to tell them that we were not trying to occupy or humiliate you. You are going to be the new iraqi army. I dismissed it as idle gossip and said lets get on with the brief. The next day i walked in and everyone is quiet in this big cavernous palace we had taken over. The lieutenant had a piece of paper for me. In three sentences it said the iraqi army is hereby dismissed and disbanded. That is what it looks like in foresight. It didnt take hindsight to see the problem. David at one point you were trying to capture fallujah. You found there was not enough support to do the things you thought the military needed to do. Is that right . Gen. Mattis we had a troop cap put on us so we did not have enough troops. An areasponsible for the size of North Carolina and i had 16,000 troops to control it. Do the map math on the geography. We had contractors who were misguided. They drove into fallujah without checking in with the marines in the area into these guys unfortunately drove into the heart of town and were murdered by some of the tribes there, the terrorists. Their bodies were desecrated. It was not pretty. We were ordered to go in. I said i have a better idea. We were told no, you will assault the city. He had to move the innocent people out we had to move innocent people out and go after the terrorists. I said dont stop me if i have to do it. Us while we were deep in the city in house to house fighting. David would you go back us whie deep in the david as being armor secretary of defense and spending 40 years in the marine corps, what do you think are the Biggest NationalSecurity Issues this country is facing . Gen. Mattis when i came into office i was working alongside a son of texas, secretary rex tillerson. Together we determined we need to really work the rework the strategy. We need toy said continue to deal with the terrorist threat. It is an ambient threat. The primary threat to the country is a clearly authoritarian regimes acting badly. In terms of urgency it would be north korea. In terms of power, it would be russia. In terms of a political will, it would be china. We need to address those accordingly. Gen. Mattis when do you think the u. S. Will be able to get out of afghanistan . Over. You can win a war you can declare a war over. You can order your troops home. The enemy gets a vote. Ae idea that you can declare war over and it wont be a bother to me again those problems dont stay over there. You have to deal with how the world is, not how you want it to be. David do think iraq is in a situation where we dont have to worry about what is going on over there . Gen. Mattis we need to intervene militarily with large forces less but that does not mean you can disengage. The greatest generation came home from world war ii and said alize cornet world and whether you like it or not we are a part is a crummy world and whether you like it or not we are a part of it. We dont have to do it all ourselves but we will have to stick together. David have you ever thought of running for office . Gen. Mattis you are a very bad man. [laughter] david why wouldnt you be a perfect person to be a candidate someday . Gen. Mattis i have great confidence in the american people. I have never lost that confidence. We will find our way through rough patches and we will have a great leaders. David whoever the next president is, say they call you again. Would you go back into government again or are you done with Government Service . Gen. Mattis you can never say you are done because when the country calls i grew up in a country where when the country calls, you do it. It is time for a lot younger people with fresh ideas, good listeners who they have got to study history. Compared to people running for president today, you are very young. [laughter] gen. Mattis and im still at the top of my game, baby. David what is the what would you say those attributes are, to be an effective leader . Gen. Mattis listen to others, listen really well, learn from you and help them and then lead. You dont start off yelling at people or telling them what to do. You have to be able to build trust. If you build trust then you will delegate Decision Authority down below and at that point you start winning. People feel like they own it. You make clear what you want but you have to be able to build trust. Trust is the coin of the realm. David you have given your life to the country in a sense. Been eventr life has to this. Any regrets about not getting married, having children . Do you think if you were married you would have been able to do what you have done . Gen. Mattis i get out of the marine corps next year and im going to get a dog and get married. I knew i was going to do my patriotic tour in the marines for three years, go back to my hometown and teach physics and high school i had it all figured out then along comes life. I always thought next year i will get out of the marines. Im still looking, if you know anybody. [laughter] david i think you would be a pretty good catch for some people. Or anybody. If i was a 17yearold and i wanted to go into the military, why should i go into the marines over the army, or navy. . Manymattis i spent too years fighting alongside soldiers living under care for force. R by the air i love all the services. Beasley you grow very fond of your own. Obviously you grow very fond of your own. Military,o into the you come out of that formative experience with a greater sense of gratitude for everything you have in this country. W . W . Uhiono anncine dambisa moyo is economist and decisionmaker. She has made a career out of influential people. Born in 1991 during a. Of politicaleriod turmoil, she earned a masters from harvard and a doctorate in economics from oxford. She wrote for New York Times best four