I know this is an old thread, but I agree with Brian Dickicon. Wars start from miscalculation... usually the aggressor thinks his target will not respond to provocation and so the provocations start, and then the provocations escalate until they can no longer be ignored. Hitler told his generals the West was too decadent to respond, took the Rhineland, then took the Sudentenland, then thought that he could take half of Poland with his secret Sovieticon ally. The Brits realized they had to respond to the invasion of Poland. What if they had responded when the Germans had broken the Treaty of Versailles and reoccupied the Rhineland? No WWII. Similarly, the Japaneseicon had gone from beating up the occasional Marine in China to sinking a US naval vessel (the gunboat Panay), and truly believed that if they bloodied our nose at Pearl Harbor we'd skulk away. Oops. Saddam made the same mistake in 1990.

Mattis was trying to fire up the troops but he was also sending a very public message: we aren't afraid to stand up to you, Lil Kim. That is the kind of message that keeps the peace, rather than starts wars.