And now the Left media are consumed by Canine Spongiform Encephalopathy — Mad Dog Disease. It seems that everyone at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the CBS-NBC-ABC cabal all madly love outgoing Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The SPCA has come to D.C. It is fascinating that these liberals, who always denigrate the military and prefer to manipulate the armed forces into serving as their laboratory for transgender social experiments (Yes, Zer!), suddenly are singing paeans to Gen. Mattis. It is ridiculous. They have no shame.

They adore a great patriotic general? Gimme a break. Six months ago, Secretary Mattis was being grilled on why we had not yet left Afghanistan. They want to close down ICE. Not the border — that may remain wide open — but they want to close down ICE because Immigration and Customs Enforcement is run by “Nazis.” They express empathy and sympatico for extremist elements like “Black Lives Matter” when the BLM crowd oppose the police and march in streets calling for police deaths. All manifestations of defending our safety and security, at home and abroad, are evil for them. All first responders are pounded with contumely. Even Gen. David Petraeus would get heckled when he set foot on a campus to lecture.

But, now that President Trump has accepted Secretary Mattis’s resignation, oh how those Leftists love their Mad Dog! Listen to Don Lemon and Chris Matthews and Chris Cuomo as they pathetically yelp: Woof, woof! How every American liberal salivates Pavlovian merely upon hearing those sweet two syllables: Mad Dog!

Baloney. Or, as they say in the Land of Canine: Grrrrrrrrr!

If Trump Derangement Syndrome has evolved into a full-fledged malady impacting half the American population, it now seems to have spawned a new ailment: Mad Dog Disease. The basic symptoms are the inexplicable sorrow being expressed by anti-war activists, flower-bearing peaceniks, who incomprehensibly cannot sleep, eat, or otherwise function now that James “Mad Dog” Mattis no longer is our Secretary of Defense. They can’t handle it: Who will protect us, if not our sweet beloved Mad Dog? It is a thing.

For those who have learned American subjects in school beside Identity Studies, the United States in fact is led by a civilian commander-in-chief whom the public elects. It is presumed that the President is too busy to do everything by himself, so he appoints aides, advisors, and surrounds himself with a cabinet. But in the end, they all serve at the pleasure of the President whom the people elected. That is how it should be. No one elected James Mattis to be in charge of America’s defense strategy. For that matter, no one elected Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Morning Joe & Mika, Al Sharpton, or anyone else to that role — and none of them has television ratings to suggest that they reflect the views of more than a pittance among the population, most of whom get stuck watching CNN while at the airport awaiting their delayed flight or while standing at the dry cleaner.

James Mattis is not the first Secretary of Defense to leave office after policy differences with a President. Obama went through Secretaries of Defense as fast and furious as Bill Clinton went through women who got near him while Hillary was investing in cattle futures, setting up email servers in her bathroom, or losing her attorney billing records at the Rose Law Firm. Let us recall FOODS: the Fluidity of the Obama Defense Secretary:

Robert M. Gates (lasted 891 days)

Leon Panetta (lasted 606 days)

Chuck Hagel (lasted 720 days)

Ash Carter (lasted 703 days)

By way of comparison, Secretary Mattis also will have served under President Trump 703 days — as long as Carter did under Obama, just a fortnight less than Hagel lasted under Obama, and a good chunk longer than Panetta lasted under Obama. Do you remember the newspaper dirges and media weeping when Ash was sent to the pyre? When Hagel was chucked? When Panetta was no longer sandwiched in? Neither do I. (By the way, Defense Secretary Leslie Aspin left Bill Clinton after 378 days.)

More importantly, throughout our history American Presidents often have asked prominent generals who have served patriotically with enormous distinction to step aside when policy differences became implacable. Famously, Abraham Lincoln had to oust Gen. George McClellan, who simply was not getting the job done for the Army of the Potomac at the outset of the Civil War. At the time McClellan was even better known and even more respected than Gen. Mattis deservingly is today. McClellan lasted at the top just a bit more than one year during the Civil War until November 9, 1862. And Lincoln was not done replacing generals. Until he finally found Ulysses Grant, Lincoln haplessly plowed through one general after another: Irvin McDowell, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker, and George Meade. Imagine what CNN and the entire Left media would have done back then if such media had existed then and had suffered from a comparable Lincoln Syndrome Derangement (LSD) — and they probably would have. Today we probably would be two countries, each with half the consequential significance.

President Harry Truman asked for Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s retirement, and after that Gen. MacArthur did not return. During the 1940s, with the whole planet in turmoil amid World War II, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower sidelined one of our most brilliant, charismatic, and patriotic military leaders, Gen. George S. Patton, despite Patton’s being deemed virtually irreplaceable, especially after Patton had turned the tide and had driven Rommel out of North Africa and then made advances into Italy. In the end, Patton’s role was reduced to serving as a decoy during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. More recently, Gen. David Petraeus was removed when a personal scandal tragically shortened his brilliant and patriotic military career. Each of these three generals was at least as important for his time and place as is Gen. Mattis.

None of these military changes at the top imperiled the Republic. Indeed, could there have been a more frightening loss for many Americans than when Franklin Roosevelt, who had been commander-in-chief throughout all of World War II, having built strong personal bonds with Winston Churchill and having colluded with Stalin and the Russians as our allies on the eastern front, suddenly died on April 12, 1945? Although V-E Day, marking victory over Europe and Nazi Germany’s surrender, was within sight (and indeed would come a month later), we still were at war with the Nazis, just having overcome the devastating final German counter-attack at the Battle of the Bulge, and we still had the Japanese thereafter to deal with in the Pacific theater. There was informed anticipation that we could be losing as many as 500,000 men in Operation Downfall once we got past Okinawa and directed our focus on attacking the Japanese mainland. Who would lead us in the face of such catastrophe? Truman?

We forget now, but Truman was a comparative nobody and nothing at the time. FDR’s first Vice President, John “Cactus Jack” Garner, had been a serious player, having been House Minority Leader and then Speaker of the House before serving two terms as Roosevelt’s first Veep. Henry Wallace, who just had served eight years as Secretary of Agriculture, was Vice President through Roosevelt’s third term. And then came Harry Truman, a two-term Senator from Missouri with limited presence, who rose to the Vice Presidency on January 20, 1945 — and suddenly was commander-in-chief of the United States less than three months later on April 12. This veritable novice suddenly found himself in charge of leading us past Hitler and then dealing with the impossible choices that would confront him in dealing with Japan: Will we send in the military and perhaps lose another half a million men, even as the Japanese were vowing additionally to murder all 168,000 American prisoners of war they were holding if we invaded their mainland? Would we be prepared to fight another three years into 1948 as then was expected? Or would we opt to cut our losses by changing the course of civilization and dropping “The Bomb”? If so, would we stop at one? If Japan would not surrender, two? If that did not finish the war, another? Another?

That would be up to Truman, Vice President of twelve weeks.

Somehow we emerged from the Civil War with our nation intact. Likewise from World War II. We survived Okinawa and we somehow even survived Obama — who, after all, got beaten by a junior varsity. That is how our country operates. The peoples elect the civilian commander in chief, and he sets policy, not his appointees. They serve at his pleasure to help him achieve his objectives and fulfill the promises he made to the voters who elected him. No general, however patriotic and heroic, is above that hierarchy. Gen. James Mattis is one of the finest military heroes and leaders we have been blessed to have serve our country in this era. But it was time for him to step aside from the President’s cabinet because he differed from the President on so many policy issues. He did not share President Trump’s views opposing transgender social experimentation in the armed forces. He disagreed on the initiative to launch a sixth unit of the armed forces, focusing on a space force. He opposed moving our Israel embassy to Jerusalem. He opposed pulling out of the Paris climate accord, and he opposed pulling out of the disastrously myopic Iran Deal. He even demurred on the President’s decision to impose tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel in order to protect and foster America’s home-grown aluminum and steel production capabilities. He did not share the President’s view that the military and its budget will need to be part of building the Wall along our southern border, and that fight looms larger than ever as the new Congress enters, intent on withholding funding for the Wall, almost-certainly assuring a showdown over the use of defense funds for homeland security.

Really, Gen. Mattis really had to depart. The media should honor the continued vitality of the civilian leadership of our armed forces, rooted in the United States Constitution. President Trump is doing fine. The nation is in good hands. Remember: it was not that long ago that our defense and national security were in the hands of Obama, his revolving door of Defense Secretaries — and Susan Rice handling, uh, intelligence. Those were the people freeing murderers from Gitmo to murder again, while justifying the releases as needed to bring home Bo Bergdahl, a coward who is lucky he was not shot for desertion, but whom Rice said had served with “honor and distinction.” After we survived the psychological syndromes that the Obama Wasted Decade should have engendered, we have been inoculated. The Left media can go bark up another tree.