General Mattis; head and shoulders above Congressional Democrats (for starters)

"In this case with this group, I think you want to verify then trust. We have asked them –demanded – that they break with al-Qaida since the Bush administration. They have refused to do so. They murdered 3,000 innocent people, citizens of 91 countries on 9/11. We should never forget that. The Taliban hid those people among them, refused to break with them, and have refused to this day to break."

Newsmax  "Saying his deal-breaking stance against a full withdrawal in Syria might have helped the U.S. keep troops there – and slow the pullout in Afghanistan – former Defense Secretary James Mattis will let the "historians" weigh his lasting impact on the Middle East and Afghanistan peace deal talks with Taliban leadership.

" 'I'll let the historians sort that out," Mattis told CBS's "Face the Nation." "I don't know what all went into the decision to reverse that call to pull everyone out, but I can't answer that."

"Mattis, promoting his book "Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead," told host Margaret Brennan the Obama administration made a costly mistake with a full withdrawal in Iraq, and President Donald Trump has thus far avoided repeating that mistake.

Penguin Books

" 'I think President Obama's administration had made the decision to leave Iraq despite what the intelligence community was telling us would happen: They were very clear that an al- Qaida-associated group would rise, that the Iraqi government, the Iraqi people, Iraqi nation was in a post-combat, prereconciliation phase," Mattis told Brennan.

" 'We needed to keep our influence there a little longer and draw down year by year, not draw everyone out at one time. The intelligence community was very clear. They forecasted the rise of a group – you and I know it as ISIS – and we should have taken their advice on board.' " . . .

Mattis Slaps Down MSNBC On NATO: Uh, It's Stronger Under Trump  "Mattis is a professional. He won’t go scorched earth, even if that’s what many in the media want him to do". 

Mattis won't attack Trump in book 'Call Sign Chaos,' but you might want to go easy on him  "For the next two years, Mattis helped persuade Trump not to abandon allies, not to pull precipitously out of difficult military operations abroad just because they were messy and unappealing, and not to go to war in places like the Korean Peninsula.
. . . 
"Such criticisms are misguided. To be sure, Mattis' specific ideas and actions can and should be scrutinized and debated. But there should be no doubt, among Democrats or Republicans, about the quality of the leadership he provided this country in recent times, nor about the importance and timeliness of his new book's message." . . .