General Mattis on Obama

Consider the lineup of Democrat candidates today; which of them do you see as standing up to America's enemies? Below are excerpts only and the full story is at the links provided.

Mattis: Obama Failed to Respond to Iran Bomb Plot on U.S. Soil Because of Nuclear Deal  "After the surprise resignation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis last December, Democrats were quick to politicize the news, and have certainly been hoping ever since that Mattis would provide them with new information they could use to attack Donald Trump. He does have a memoir coming out, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, but it looks like it’s Barack Obama and Joe Biden who get the bulk of the criticism.
"Prior be being Secretary of Defense under Trump, Mattis served as commander of U.S. Central Command under Obama and Biden. Mattis had predicted that Iran would continue to provoke the United States. Mattis’s warning went ignored, and when Iran committed an act of war on American soil, he was not told about it, and the United States never responded to it. 
. . .
"Mattis writes, “Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House, Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.” 
"In response to the plot, Mattis believed a forceful reaction was necessary. “I believed we had to respond forcefully. My military options would raise the cost for this attack beyond anything the mullahs and the Qods generals could pay.” But, Obama wasn’t interested. “We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation, jailing the low-level courier.”
"Why didn’t Obama want a forceful response to the act of war by Iran? His secret nuclear deal."
. . . 

“In my view, we had to hold Iran to account and strike back when attacked. But there was a reason for the administration’s restraint. The administration was secretly negotiating with Iran, although I was not privy to the details at the time.”

"Those negotiations would lead to the Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015. Mattis is critical of the agreement, which President Trump withdrew from last year. “In my military judgment, America had undertaken a poorly calculated, long-shot gamble. At the same time, the administration was lecturing our Arab friends that they had to accommodate Iran as if it were a moderate neighbor in the region and not an enemy committed to their destruction,” Mattis writes. “As long as its leaders consider Iran less a nation-state than a revolutionary cause, Iran will remain a terrorist threat potentially more dangerous than Al Qaeda or ISIS.” . . .