Mattis says why he quit Trump administration

Former US Defense Secretary James Mattis has said that he had expressed his opposition in a forceful way to President Donald Trump's policies than by leaving the Pentagon.

Mattis made the remarks in an interview on Wednesday with MSNBC when asked when officials such as him would begin to forcefully condemn the Trump administration.

"Well, I don't know how I could have spoken more loudly to where I stand [than] when I put in my letter of resignation, and quitting a job when I had not completed it, two years in," Mattis said.

"This isn't about one man and the solution isn't going to be one person speaking out. It's going to be about the majority of Americans saying that's enough, we owe better to the next generation than what we're doing right now," Mattis added.

Mattis resigned from the Defense Department in late 2018 after Trump announced plans to withdraw US troops from Syria, which he strongly opposed.

Trump later backed away from his decision, allowing a portion of the US troops to remain in Syria in what the Pentagon claims as an effort to prevent a resurgence of the Daesh terrorist group.

Mattis is breaking months of public silence as he promotes his new book, “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” which hit the stands on September 3.

Mattis has given a series of media interviews about his time in the administration.

"I want people to understand why I couldn’t stay. I’ve been informed by four decades of experience, and I just couldn’t connect the dots anymore,” he told The Atlantic last week.

“If you leave an administration, you owe some silence," he added at the time. "When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country."

Regarding his reasons for leaving the Trump administration, Mattis offered a more critical explanation than the one he wrote in his resignation letter.

“When my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faith with our allies, no longer resonated, it was time to resign, despite the limitless joy I felt serving alongside our troops in defense of our Constitution,” he wrote in an essay adapted from his new book and published by The Wall Street Journal last week.