Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to serve as his secretary of Defense, is coming under fire for allegedly refusing to rescue Army Green Berets during a 2001 incident in Afghanistan.
According to NBC News, the allegations were first written about in a 2011 book by Eric Blehm called "The Only Thing Worth Dying For."
Now that Mattis has been named to Trump's Cabinet, the incident could receive another look.
NBC reports that a team of Green Berets was helping protect Afghanistan's future president Hamid Karzai on Dec. 5, 2001 when a smart bomb dropped from a U.S. warplane mistakenly landed near them. Three U.S. soldiers and several dozen Afghans died as a result of the attack.
Mattis was a brigadier (one-star) general at the time and was in charge of a group of Marines located near the incident. According to reports, Mattis refused to send helicopters, located about 45 minutes away, to rescue the Green Berets.
A special forces unit from the Air Force was eventually sent to help the soldiers, even though they were three hours away in Pakistan.
Ret. Lt. Col. Jason Amerine was a captain in the Green Berets at the time and commented on Mattis in a lengthy Facebook post Friday.
"5th Group wanted to end the bad press associated with the friendly fire and the inaction by Mattis only made it worse so they buried my angry complaints and sought to shut me up about everything that happened that day," Amerine wrote.
"So I never stopped speaking out about it for the last fifteen years. Maybe Mattis was a good general later in his career by whatever standard you want but it has been bizarre to suddenly see these facts up for debate. He was indecisive and betrayed his duty to us, leaving my men to die during the golden hour when he could have reached us."
Meanwhile, Military.com reported Thursday that Mattis is opposed to having women serving in combat roles, not because of a lack of physical skills but because putting them in close quarters with male soldiers "is not setting them up for success."
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