Born into a family of Philadelphia “bluebloods”—both grandfathers were prominent bankers, his father was a powerful United State congressman—Smedley Butler served 34 years in the United States Marine Corps. His personal story mirrors his country’s transition from a republic to an imperial power. Devil Dog should be required reading for every American citizen. This “Amazing True Story of The Man who Saved America” is as pertinent to the American scene today as it was one hundred years ago. A major difference between now and then is that American society does not at this time have such a savior.
All Americans should know the story of Smedley Butler and the rise of the American empire at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, but most, of course, do not. Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster, Devil Dog should have enjoyed many weeks of topping nonfiction bestseller lists. Instead, 2010’s top selling books included political tomes by the likes of Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Laura Ingraham, David Limbaugh and George W. Bush—all of whom would have been dubbed as “conservative hatchet men and women” by the straight-talking Major General Butler.
There are myriad ways to measure the difference between a healthy democracy and a democracy, such as ours, where the word democrat is spoken with a sneer. The sales figures of Devil Dog and of the above hucksters in 2010 is but one of too many. For no American—not Palin, Romney, Ingraham, Limbaugh and Bush—could claim to be more patriotic than Butler. Consider:
--In 1900, at 18 years of age, U. S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Smedley Butler commanded a company of 45 enlisted men who fought in China during the infamous Boxer Rebellion. Spurred on by imperial-minded politicians and a hysterical mass media, Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and the United States all sent military troops into China in order to capture Chinese treasure. Butler and his American troops were the first to fight their way to the very walls of the “Forbidden City”—the center of Chinese political power in Peking. Ready to enter, the Americans were told to “stand down” from their final assault because their allies wanted to make sure that they would share in the plunder.
--Twelve years later, Major Smedley Butler found himself at the forefront of a U.S. effort to squash a burgeoning democracy in Nicaragua. Major Butler secured the success of the American campaign by singlehandedly convincing the leader of the Nicaraguan resistance movement to surrender. In a portent of the future, Butler experienced mixed feelings about his own “heroism”: Nicaraguan General Luis Mena had been a major shareholder of La Luz, the country’s most prominent mining company that was controlled by United States business interests. Mena’s love for his country came to override the personal pleasure he had gained from being in the American pocket. Butler respected Mena, but now he had to help destroy him and the Nicaraguan resistance under the guise of "American democracy.”
--In 1917, following the U.S. military takeover of Haiti, Major Butler was the military overlord of an American puppet Haiti government. Initially dismissive of the Haitian people’s ability to govern themselves, in time Butler ultimately decided that he wanted “to make Haiti a first-class black man’s country.” But his military superiors would rotate Butler out of the country in 1918. He never rose above the symbol of America’s occupation force that would rule Haiti for nearly twenty years—and doom the country to a century and more of political and spiritual impoverishment.
--In World War I, Butler commanded the U.S. Marines’ 13th Regiment. After a nightmarish trip across the Atlantic Ocean, the “Hoodoo Regiment” arrived at Camp Pontanezen, where 65,000 soldiers were crammed into a camp built for 1,500. 12,000 soldiers were sick with flu. Hundreds more were dying each day.
After being appointed commander of the camp at a time when it was about to be recognized in the States as an international scandal, Commander Butler—though sick himself—blew past protocol and quickly transformed Camp Pontanezen into a model military facility. As a result of his Herculean lifesaving effort, Butler was awarded both the U.S. Army’s and Navy’s Distinguished Service Medals and was promoted to the position of brigadier general. He was 37 years old, the youngest brigadier general in marine history.
Brigadier General Butler went on to become a crusading crime fighter in Philadelphia during Prohibition, a leading spokesman for American World War I veterans who were betrayed by their country in the darkest hours of the Depression, and a coveted front man for a joint Wall Street-military coup intent on overthrowing first-term President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Smedley Butler’s life story reads like the most outlandish of Hollywood’s mythmaking scripts.
In the end, what did this most celebrated military man of his age learn from his life’s experiences? Butler gave many speeches and wrote his own book, War Is a Racket. Much of what he had to say has been preserved for posterity. Perhaps the best summary of his life as a military man is this—
I spent 33 years and four months in active military
service and during that period I spent most of my
time as a high class muscle man for big business,
for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico . . . safe for American oil
interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
place for the National City Bank boys to collect
revenues in. I helped in the raping of a dozen Central
American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I
helped pacify Nicaragua for the International Banking
House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought
light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar
interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the
American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927,
I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went on its way
unmolested.
. . . Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al
Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to
operate in three city districts. We Marines operated
on three continents.
We, the people of The United States of America, continue to operate in much the same way in every populated continent on this Earth. We need another Smedley Butler to make us understand the error of our ways. We live instead in a land of inhumane babble.
