{"id":23771,"date":"2014-01-15T00:02:34","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T05:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23771"},"modified":"2014-01-14T21:21:37","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T02:21:37","slug":"qotd-early-20th-century-american-imperialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/01\/15\/qotd-early-20th-century-american-imperialism\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Early 20th century American imperialism"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country&#8217;s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.<\/p>\n<p>I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. 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 half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify 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 see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. <\/p>\n<p>Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best <em>he<\/em> could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three <em>continents<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC (1881\u20131940), <em>War is a racket<\/em>, 1935.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country&#8217;s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[465,7,5,13],"tags":[727,112,266,514],"class_list":["post-23771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas","category-history","category-military","category-usa","tag-cronycapitalism","tag-organizedcrime","tag-protectionism","tag-usmc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6bp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23773,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23771\/revisions\/23773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}