Apparently, among President Trump's favourite movies is the Second World War epic Patton: Lust for Glory. General George Patton was a charismatic, no nonsense and hard-fighting kind of officer. He got results but he was also self-absorbed and controversial - twice striking soldiers suffering from combat stress. Is Patton perhaps, in the president's mind, the archetypal general? If so, then he will have been deeply disappointed by the raft of generals whom he appointed to his administration. Indeed, we know that he was because he has said so, most recently castigating General James Mattis - his defence secretary - as a failure, who he had "effectively fired". General Mattis, of course, actually resigned. Let's set aside Mr Trump's first national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, who did indeed have to fall on his sword. He was forced to resign in February 2017 after lying to Vice-President Mike Pence over his contacts with the Russians. The most noteworthy aspects of Mr Trump's initial picks for his administration were his heavy reliance upon high-profile military men. Who is General 'Mad Dog' Mattis?Trump: 'We're no longer the suckers, folks'Why did Trump dump his security adviser?Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly was appointed as Secretary of Homeland Security, before subsequently becoming the White House chief-of-staff. Another senior Marine General, James Mattis, became defence secretary, and the errant Michael Flynn was replaced as national security adviser by the widely respected and innovative military thinker, Army General HR McMaster. Fast forward to the end of December 2018 - all three men, first Gen McMaster in March, then Gen Kelly and finally Gen Mattis, have all gone. This is no surprise. It was seen as being almost inevitable when I spoke to a raft of experts a year or so into the Trump administration's tenure. Their argument was that the president would prove impossible to brief and ignorant of detail. Ultimately the military men would be forced to choose between the code of values that they had followed during their professional careers rather than adopting those of the property magnate and reality TV show star who now sat in the White House. And so it has proved. Why then was Mr Trump so enamoured by the military in the first place? It should be remembered that it was the context that made the generals' roles so significant in this administration, not that they came from the military as such. It is often forgotten that President Obama too had his raft of former military appointees, among them his first national security adviser and secretary of veterans affairs, both of whom were ex-generals. But what made the Trump team so different was the fact that many Republican-leaning foreign policy experts refused at the outset to have anything to do with it. Mr Trump had to cast his net wider and given his own peculiar view of the sort of gutsy leadership provided by generals like Patton, then why not draw on America's contemporary warrior caste? AFP.