When you hear the name Smedley Darlington Butler, your mind instantly goes in one of two directions. 1) That might be the coolest name I’ve ever heard. Or 2) Ole Gimlet Eye! The legendary general of the Marine Corps! If you know, you know…
Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) spent his 33 year long career fighting on three different continents: North America, Asia, and Europe. Butler is one of only 19 Americans to receive the Medal of Honor twice, and one of only 14 to receive it twice for two separate actions. Butler spent most of his life in the military, and he is known within military circles for his bravery and leadership in combat. He’s more widely recognized, though, for his outspoken criticism of war and of the emerging military-industrial complex of his day. In Butler’s own words:
“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. During that time, I spent most of my service as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
Join us for this episode of SNAFUBAR as we revisit the early life and career of one of the most legendary, and controversial, Marine Corps Veterans of all time.
SNAFUBAR is regularly hosted by Sara Hart, Chair of the Applied Humanites Department at Cal Poly Humboldt, and Jeff Crane who is an Environmental Historian and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Research and writing for the show by Liam Salcuni (who appears as a guest host) and Roman Sotomayor. SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Works Cited:
Naval History and Heritage Command, Smedley Darlington Butler.
Lowell Thomas, Old Gimlet Eye: The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler, 1933.
Smedley Darlington Butler, War is a Racket, 1935.
United States Marine Corps History Division, Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC.
>> Abigail Smithson: Hey Everyone, this is Abigail Smithson, producer of SNAFUBAR. This week's episode focuses on Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. While his career in the United States marine corps earned him an astounding number of military honors and eventually led him to be a sharp critic of the military industrial complex, it began with the Spanish American war, the nation’s own beginning of overseas military expansion. It’s that twinned beginning that we turn to today. Listen on for more…
♪♪
>> Dwight Eisenhower (Archival Audio): You are about to embark upon the great crusade.
>>JFK (Archival Audio): The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it.
>>Douglas MacArthur (Archival Audio): Only the dead have seen the end of war.
>> Dwight Eisenhower (Archival Audio): We will accept nothing less than full victory.
>>Sara Hart: ♪♪ You're listening to SNAFUBAR at Cal poly Humboldt.
>>Liam Salcuni: We finally did it. We have an episode that features the one and only. What does this episode explore, you might ask? I know you're probably wondering.
>>Sara Hart: The anticipation. It's killing me.
>>Liam Salcuni: Can I get a drumroll, please, little drum roll. Smedley Darlington Butler.
>>Sara Hart: Ahh, Smedley Darlington Butler.
>>Liam Salcuni: Literally maybe the best name ever. I mean, after doing quite a bit of research, it got me thinking he might be the inspiration behind the saying the man, the myth, the legend.
>>Sara Hart: He does loom pretty large.
>>Liam Salcuni: Welcome back to the Snafu Bar, a show on American militarism and national myths. I'm Liam Sal Cooney, lecturer with the history department at Cal Poly Humboldt, and a writer-researcher for the show, and I'll be jumping in as guest host today.
>>Sara Hart: And I am Sarah Hart, chair of the Applied Humanities Department, also here at Cal Poly Humboldt, daughter of a Marine combat veteran, and longtime super fan of the Major General.
>>Liam Salcuni: There you go. Today, we'll explore the early life and career of Smedley Darlington Butler, one of the most decorated Marines in United States history. Throughout his 33 year and four-month career in the United States Marine Corps, Smedley Darlington Butler earned many nicknames. He was known as the Fighting Quaker, Maverick Marine, Old Gimlet Eye. That's one for his intense soul piercing stare. There was also General Ductboard and the Fighting Hell Devil. There's just so much lore and mystery about this guy.
>>Sara Hart: General Ductboard is a good one, and we could have a whole episode on this. Duct boards, folks, are the wooden slats used a lot in World War I, that were laid out to make a pathway through boggy conditions. When he requested them for his dangerously muddy posting at Camp Pontanezen in France. Am I saying that right, Liam?
>>Liam Salcuni: That sounds about right.
>>Sara Hart: Pontanezen, in France, which was like a major entry export. Like, thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers moved in and from the American expeditionary forces came through this camp. So it was very populous. Lots of folks walking around in the mud. He requested these duct boards. He was denied. And so he took some of his men, some of the men under his command and raided a warehouse to get them himself.
>>Liam Salcuni: And what a difference those duct boards made. The troops had to appreciate the heck out of that. General Ductboard
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, it did make a huge difference, cutting down disease like crazy and really transforming that camp into something much more useful. But, okay, yeah, he was a real get the job done kind of guy, and also one of the most highly decorated Marines in US history. He's one of only 19 Americans to receive the Medal of Honor twice and one of only 14 to receive it twice for two separate actions. His were in Veracruz and Haiti. The Medal of Honor is the most prestigious military decoration awarded by the United States. It's presented by the president on behalf of Congress and it is, in the words of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, "the United States highest award for military valor in action. Etched within are the very values that each recipient displayed in the moments that mattered: bravery, courage, sacrifice, integrity, a deep love of country, and a desire to always do what is right", end quote.
>>Liam Salcuni: I mean, Smedley Butler hits a lot of those bravery, courage, you know, throughout his long military career. That's certainly true. I wonder, though, what he would think of that definition. Did you know he tried to return his first Medal of Honor to the Navy?
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: That's the one he was awarded for actions during the Mexican Revolution and the subsequent US occupation of Veracruz. But we'll get more on that in another episode--.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: --But he did try to give it back when he was, you know, received this. 14 years before that event, Butler received a Brevet commission to captain for heroic actions during the Boxer Rebellion in China in the year 1,900. Officers in the Navy and Marine Corps weren't at the time eligible for the Medal of Honor. So the Brevet commission or a kind of infield promotion was as high an honor as was available. In 1921, the Marine Corps created the Brevet Medal to honor or signify the very few officers who had received that Brevet promotion. Only 20 people received the Brevet medal.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, it's the rarest of military medals.
>>Liam Salcuni: Sidebar listeners, incoming. How many of you knew that the US deployed to the Boxer Rebellion? This might be another example of a war that America was involved in, that most of us have never heard of. There's probably a long list of that.
>>Sara Hart: Right, like, name the country.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah. Yeah, right. Put a tag on a map, and we've been there. Anyway, back to Butler. After commanding the 13th regiment in France during World War I, Butler received the Army Distinguished Service Medal and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, along with the French Order of the Black Star. Adding to the nicknames, he might have been called Mr. Worldwide. He fought on three continents, North America, Asia and Europe, as well as numerous conflicts in the Caribbean and Central America.
>>Sara Hart: I mean, this guy was everywhere. You have Johnny Cash playing in your head right now.
>>Liam Salcuni: I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, if they made a Smedley movie, that song would be the opener. It's unusual the degree to which we can follow Major General Smedley Darlington Butler's life and see geopolitics unfold. In a lot of ways, it's really no surprise that he lives on in the Marine Corps as such a legendary figure, even a mythic one. And that really starts for Marines in boot camp.
>>Liam Salcuni: It's not hard to see why. There are many prominent figures in American history that stand out across a variety of historical periods. Figures like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, or Martin Luther King junior come to mind. But most people have probably never heard of Smedley Darlington Butler. In today's episode, we hope to elucidate his electric career. We'll start by tracing his early years and how he gets involved in the military and all that interesting stuff. We'll look at his first deployment with the Marine Corps to Guantanamo Bay of all places during the Spanish American War. And we'll get into that a little bit, too, because this is really when the United States begins to transform into a global power and empire. And Smedley is there on this maiden voyage of his own.
>>Sara Hart: Burgeoning together with the nation.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: Smedley Darlington Butler spent most of his life in the military, and he is known within military circles for his bravery and leadership in combat. He's more widely recognized, though, for his outspoken criticism of war and the emerging military industrial complex of his day. In Butler's own words, "I spent 33 years and four months in active service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to major general. During that time, I spent most of my service as a high class muscle man for big business, Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism".
>>Liam Salcuni: Whoa. Smedley telling it like it is. Wow.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, he turns critical.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah, that is a powerful critique from someone who really earned the right to say it to describe his role in the Marine Corps as a gangster for capitalism. It's certainly something you don't hear every day. And it's something that kind of got him into some hot water later in life, and possibly one of the reasons why his runs for public office were unsuccessful--.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah maybe.
>>Liam Salcuni: --A gangster for capitalism.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, well, this particular chapter in the Major General's life is something that we will absolutely turn to, all on its own. Butler is remembered not only for his distinguished military career, but also for that sharp critique of his own role in global military engagements and of the system he once served.
>>Liam Salcuni: I suppose this is one reason why he's such a good fit here at the Snafu bar. His life and his legacy so complex. No easy answers in this story. And I suppose that might also be one reason why we have a bust of him here in the studio, right next to us as speaking right now and looking at--.
>>Sara Hart: We're gazing at.
--Smedley Darlington Butler's.
>>Sara Hart: He's got quite the profile.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: Strong profile. Good chin.
>>Liam Salcuni: Good chin, strong nose.
>>Sara Hart: Nice ear.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: How's the ear on the other side, Liam?
>>Liam Salcuni: Ear looks great.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, both ears are good. He's really a perfect fit for us here. The Marine Corps gave him an opportunity to become a dedicated leader to his men and a fighter for his country. He directly participated in the American imperial system and contributed meaningfully and honorably to the growth of the American Empire. But his time as a Marine, it also revealed to him the corruption and the greed that underscores many of America's foreign wars.
>>Liam Salcuni: Butler, drawing on his experience as a military insider, repeatedly criticized the corruption and hypocrisy he believed underpinned many US foreign interventions and occupations. He questioned what those wars were truly being fought for, suggesting they often served private economic interests rather than national security. In Butler's view, conflicts in places such as Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Philippines were waged not for democracy or national security, but to protect the financial interests of powerful corporations and investors and to open access to markets for American manufactured goods. While business elites reaped the profits, ordinary people, Americans, and others, paid the price in blood, hardship, and social and political strife. So without any further ado, let's explore the life of one of the most famous marines in American history, who had gone to become one of the military establishment's fiercest critics.
>>Sara Hart: Let's get to it. The early years: Smedley the Quaker.
>>Liam Salcuni: Isn't that funny, Smedley the Quaker.
>>Sara Hart: All right, listeners, welcome back to the Snafu bar, where we are talking about Smedley Darlington Butler. We're going to start with his youth in Pennsylvania, right? Liam?
>>Liam Salcuni: Smedley Darlington Butler was born into a prominent Quaker family from Westchester, Pennsylvania on July 30th, 1881. His name is actually a combination of all three prominent Quaker families that he's related to, so that's pretty awesome.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: These were very well connected families dating back to the time before America was even a thing. The family names were the Smedleys, the Darlingtons, and the Butlers. He's got all three in one name.
>>Sara Hart: Smedley. I mean, that's a name, and not a name you hear every day. I know a pretty outstanding dog named Smedley, if you're out there listening Smedley, good boy. But I don't think I've ever met a person with the name. It's worth remembering everybody in the neighborhood at the time would have known which family he belonged to. The name would have resonated or elicited recognition, like all three of the names, more at that time than maybe it does now, definitely from the aristocratic Quaker families of Pennsylvania, very well connected. One of his grandfathers, Samuel Butler was the state treasurer, Smedley Darlington, his maternal grandfather, was a two time congressman. Smedley's father, Thomas Butler was a member of Congress 1896-1928. Long time. A very long time. Representing Chester and Delaware counties. As a congressman, he took great interest in the Navy, especially in the Marine Corps. And he sat on the House Naval Affairs Committee during most of his time in office.
>>Liam Salcuni: Maybe all this has something to do with how Smedley was able to become a commissioned Marine Corps officer at the age of 16. 16. When the minimum age requirement was 18. Oh. But we'll get to that later.
>>Sara Hart: 16, though, boggles the mind.
>>Liam Salcuni: It sure does. So he's from this prominent political family, I guess you could say the Pennsylvania aristocracy. Hey, Sarah, from my sanity, can you tell us a little bit more about the Quakers? Yeah. I know that they were one of the first religious organizations to condemn slavery and the slave trade. And I thought Quakers are supposed to be pacifists, right?
>>Sara Hart: And what's up with the Fighting Quaker, you know? Well, okay, so, first off, the Quakers is not the official name. On the books, they're the Religious Society of Friends. They're Christians, following what I think of as kind of a melo mystical movement, and organized since the 1650s. They started in England, 17th century England, folks. A lot of religious development and change going on. It's a very vibrant environment for religious development. And so the Religious Society of Friends develops in this context, and they emphasize each person's direct experience of, and relationship with, God. Each person's inner light, as they call it. Quaker was originally used as an insult because their founder, George Fox, sort of famously told the magistrate, who has given him a hard time that the guy should "tremble at the word of the Lord." And so he's like, Look at you, you Quaker. But the name stuck, and it's not considered an insult now, and the Quakers came to America early in the colonial period, one more group trying to escape the persecution that was going on across the pond. And we saw a lot of that. But, the Puritans didn't so much take to the Quakers, and they kicked him out of Massachusetts.
>>Liam Salcuni: That's right. They were not having it with anybody.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. They were pretty picky about who they let in the poll.
>>Liam Salcuni: They were literalists. Yes. So if you couldn't vibe with them and, you know, be on the Puritan thing, you're out.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. Very, very rigid doctrinal and behavioral standards those folks maintained. Um, so the Quakers get kicked out of Massachusetts. Roger Williams, yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: Shout out Rhode Island.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, that hero of religious liberty, he welcomed them to Rhode Island, that state he set up really as a bastion for religious outsiders. And in 1681, William Penn, another Quaker, was granted the territory that came to be known as...
>>Liam Salcuni: Pennsylvania.
>>Sara Hart: You got it. Pennsylvania. That's whole story on its own. Interesting in its intersection with native peoples, especially the Lenape and how William Penn and what came to be known as Pennsylvania had a pretty responsible and admirable relationship with the surrounding peoples. So the Quakers tend toward pacifism for sure, but, like, with everything, it's more complicated than that. Lots of conscientious objectors in the Quaker crowd, and they really did a lot to develop conscientious objection laws and regulations in the United States. But some found that their inner life called them to what they saw as an honorable and defensive military service.
>>Liam Salcuni: Okay, good basic intro there. That makes a lot of sense. And Smedley wasn't the first Quaker who was compelled to fight for something larger than themselves. His maternal grandfather, Smedley Darlington, joined the Union during the Civil War to defend Pennsylvania against a Confederate advance. Darington enlisted in 1862 with Beaumont's independent Company of cavalry, Pennsylvania volunteer emergency Militia. He was discharged that same year after the successful defense of Pennsylvania against Confederate troops. So it was a short stint, but he was there.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, so I guess we could say that he was the original fighting Quaker.
>>Liam Salcuni: Totally. It might have been where Smedley got some of that fighting spirit from. Born in 1881, Smedley was the oldest of three boys. His brother Samuel was three years younger, and his littlest brother Horace was born nine years after that. Hans Schmidt writes in his book, Maverick Marine, great book, by the way, "As a child, he had a nurse and wore Fauntleroy suits. His Hicksite Quaker mother, Maude Darlington Butler, saw to it that he attended friends meetings twice a week. From friends graded high school in Westchester, he went on to nearby Haverford School, the elite secondary school for sons of upper class Quaker families in and around Philadelphia. What is a Fauntleroy suit?
>>Sara Hart: Never heard those?
>>Liam Salcuni: Never.
>>Sara Hart: Fauntleroy! This, you got to say it with a little bit of a French twist I think.
>>Liam Salcuni: Fauntleroy.
>>Sara Hart: It's an ornate velvet trimmed style of suit for young boys, very popular in the late 19th century, pretty cute.
>>Liam Salcuni: Alright. Fancy Smedley, a silver spoon upbringing.
>>Sara Hart: Yes.
>>Liam Salcuni: And the fancy Haverford School, which, if you're attending that now for secondary school, costs around 50k a year. So yes, Medley's family was living very comfortably.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, I guess you'd say.
>>Liam Salcuni: And they were also fairly devout. They spoke to one another at home and in Quaker meetings using the words thee and thou, avoiding you or sir. As the English language developed throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, you became used as a pronoun reserved for the nobility and high class members of society. It was sort of a sign of deference to address someone with you. And they were big on equity in Quaker groups, right?
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, individual equality. Everybody is equal in the eyes of the Lord, and so we will practice that in our communing with our neighbors is the idea. And everyday language was one way to show that.
>>Liam Salcuni: Totally. What I read about this is this is related to the introduction of Norman French into English society a long time ago that reserved voo in French as an address to people of high station. So it's kind of a sidebar rolling, but it explains the and the jump from you to the thee and thou.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. We think of thee and thou as very high fautin and you as more street level, but this would have been a real flip of that.
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh yeah.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. Okay, get on with it. What are we talking about?
>>Liam Salcuni: Okay, the Quakers believe that all human beings, regardless of race, class, occupation, and title, are equal in the eyes of God. Avoiding pronouns tied to class, like you, reinforced Quaker social and religious beliefs. Butler's sign off on letters to his mother was "thy affectionate son." This is Smedley's upbringing. At the fancy shmancy Haverford School, Schmidt writes that Smedley was "an indifferent student, but a keen athlete." And he goes on to write that "Although scrawny, as an adult, he was five foot nine, about 140 pounds and somewhat stooped in posture. He was captain of the Haverford baseball team and quarterback of the football team. Had he not joined the Marines, he almost certainly would have finished Haverford and gone to college, " end quote. Quarterback is telling, cool under pressure, a tactical thinker. And at that size, too, the guy had guts, to say the least, playing football at quarterback. You can get knocked up, pretty good. Smedley wasn't the biggest fan of the classroom, but that does not mean he didn't like learning. His classroom was out in the world waiting for him, not pouring over old books at the Haverford School.
>>Sara Hart: Nice spin. [laughter] Heard that one before. Yeah. He must have had some favorite classes, though, it's the Haverford School. They probably had some top tier instructors.
>>Liam Salcuni: Sure did. Smedley liked public speaking and Latin. Those were his favorite classes. Pretty solid class choices, too, I mean--
>>Sara Hart: Excellent choices.
>>Liam Salcuni: As a youth, Smedley enjoyed learning about ancient naval battles from history. So naturally, you know, learning Latin and a bit of classical history, too, grabbed his attention. This is something that Smedley shares with Lewis Chesty Puller, who was a huge fan of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico, or commentaries on the Gallic wars.
>>Sara Hart: Chesty Puller, we will get to him folks. He'll get an episode, too.
>>Liam Salcuni: That's incoming.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: Not today, though. Today, it's Smedley.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: Whose father wanted him to go to college and become a lawyer.
>>Sara Hart: Mm hmm.
>>Liam Salcuni: You know, and eventually get into politics. The traditional route for a Victorian era aristocratic firstborn son.
>>Sara Hart: Naturally.
>>Liam Salcuni: So Smedley studying at the Haverford School in 1898. Meanwhile, news correspondence is circulating around the United States of the dire situation in Cuba, which is 90 miles away from the south coast of Florida.
>>Sara Hart: Close.
>>Liam Salcuni: Very, very close. Cuba and for that matter, the chain of Caribbean islands scattered across the Caribbean Sea, had formerly been epicenters of bloody European colonial brutality. This system produced a laundry list of enduring social and economic issues. When I teach early American colonial history, I stress this point dramatically. It's some really dark stuff when you took a deeper dive into this, again, something we don't have time for here today, but there is a lot of political and social strife enduring. Among these Caribbean colonies, and it seems to starts to really pop off. Cuba had been under the boot of the Spanish Empire for 406 years.
>>Sara Hart: Dang, that's a long time. That's longer than the United States given a nation. And I'm guessing that as an apparatus of the Spanish colonial system, they turned cash crops to generate revenue. That also, at this time, often meant creating a slave society. Did that happen?
>>Liam Salcuni: It did. Cuba began as this modest colonial outpost occupied by the Spanish. But by the middle of the 19th century, the island was producing huge quantities of highly sought after cash crops, like sugar, coffee, tobacco, all using slave labor. The Southern United States actually took an interest in annexing Cuba for this purpose.
>>Sara Hart: For this reason. It's like a whole other state. Free people of color and lower class Cubans of Spanish and mixed race descent were periodically in revolt against the Spanish colonial rule, which was brutal and highly exploitative. So this was a churning situation. Even as the Spanish empire was in decline and losing control of their vast territorial possessions, the Spanish nobility were able to retain strong allegiances, alliances with the governing Cuban elite, incentivizing this exploitation with wealth and comfort for the people who did none of the work. But this whole thing was kind of unraveling at this point. We're 1898, it's unraveling.
>>Liam Salcuni: And certainly, by the time we get to Smedley, we're going to introduce, things are completely going off the rails. Throughout the 19th century, Cuban citizens were revolting, right? There's this long history of colonial exploitation, and this is one of its final iterations. The Cuban revolutionaries were making serious progress, controlling much of the surrounding Cuban countryside while the Spanish retained control of major cities like Havana. In his book, Gangsters of Capitalism, another great book, Jonathan Katz writes on the situation in Cuba, preceding the US intervention in 1898, Katz writes that, "One Spanish colonial governor in particular, Don Valerno Wyler Nicolao had become a villain at American dinner tables for killing noncombatants, burning homes and farms, and his forces tastes for expletive and torture." Katz goes on to write that Wyler "had ordered hundreds of thousands of Cuban civilians rounded up into squalid garrison towns behind barbed wire and guarded by soldiers with machine guns. The Spanish called it reccentration. US newspapers translated this into a newly coined term, concentration camps."
>>Sara Hart: That's where it comes. That's the start of the name we're going to see more of in the 20th century.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, we're getting deep. How does this Titus Smedley Butler bring us back.
>>Liam Salcuni: Okay, sorry. Well, this is the type of news that Americans are being exposed to. Okay. And obviously, it is a dire situation. Smedley Darlington Butler is coming from this Quaker community. Religious community that has a history of being brutally mistreated in America, Quakers were banished, persecuted, and in some cases, mutilated by Puritan groups in American colonies. Butler recounted later in life that he felt sympathy for Cuban citizens and their situation, stating, "I clenched my fists when I thought of those poor Cuban devils being starved and murdered by the beastly Spanish tyrants. I was determined to shoulder a rifle and help free little Cuba."
>>Sara Hart: Gosh, the little colony being bullied and bossed around by the larger empire, it sounds like a familiar story. Well, we'll hear more of that. So not altogether magnanimous, though, Butler refers to the Cubans as "devils," painting them with some sort of backwards wickedness. And this is on par with the imperialist mentality of the late 19th and early 20th centuries exhibited in the United States, the British Empire, the French Empire, really all over the imperial globe, the empire-driven forces. There was this sense of paternalism, thinking that the American Empire could serve Cubans better than the Spanish Empire did.
>>Liam Salcuni: Certainly. Uh. I think about imperialism like this, you know, and that is what this is and what we're getting into it. Imperialism, at its outer core is about boosting a sense of national ego, importance, superiority. You need to be invaded and--
>>Sara Hart: We're here to help.
>>Liam Salcuni: This is benevolent.
>>Sara Hart: Say, thank you.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right. To uplift backwards peoples and cultures, end is this mentality. Remember in an earlier episode, we talked about deconstructing the ideology of the "White man's burden." It's exactly in that vein. This is the same time period.
>>Sara Hart: Right.
>>Liam Salcuni: But at the inner core of imperial operations, it's really about accumulating wealth and resources. And this is done by any means necessary, even if it means displacing and killing hundreds of thousands of people, and erasing cultures and histories along the way. Imperialism is rotten to its core, the scourge of Western civilization in the route to many modern global issues countless nations face today. Imperialism or humankind's most sinister Snafu.
>>Sara Hart: Gosh, an empire real hard. And this is all we sort of hinted at it early on, and we will come back to it in an episode wholly dedicated to it, but this is a viewpoint that Smedley Butler himself comes to. Like, in some ways, we're kind of half quoting from his future works. But at this point, he's young. Okay, imperialism, that political, economic, often martial attempt to extend control far and wide. It's been a part of this country's history since before nationhood. In the early colonial period, European colonial operations influenced all kinds of exploitative and destructive practices in what would become the United States. And the nation grew directly from a lot of those practices. So You know, our nation is no stranger to empire, and coming to terms with the impacts of that on our own history, that's one of the challenges for American historians. And for Americans more generally, it turns out that it would become a challenge for Smedley Butler, too.
>>Liam Salcuni: It sure would. So, when he's a teenager, newspapers were following the events in Cuba regularly. It becomes the talk of the town and the government, getting the attention of the 16-year-old Smedley Darlington Butler. The tumult and suffering in Cuba inspired him to enlist in the Marine Corps, which is how he found himself fighting in the Spanish American War of 1898 at the ripe old age of 16.
>>Sara Hart: 16?
>>Sara Hart: Hello, listeners, and welcome back. You're listening to Snafu Bar, a show about American militarism and national myths. In this episode, we're exploring the life of a man who was both one of the Marine Corps most decorated veterans, and also, one of the most outspoken critics of American militarism and imperialism of the early 20th century: Smedley Darlington Butler. We are just about to launch into how Smedley, at the sapling young age of 16, successfully enlisted in the Marine Corps and found himself on the war torn Caribbean island of Cuba at the outbreak of the Spanish American War in 1898. I'm Sarah Hart, and I'm here with Liam Salcuni.
>>Liam Salcuni: Smedley the Marine. Here we go.
>>Sara Hart: Alright.
>>Liam Salcuni: In January of 1898, President William McKinley dispatched the USS Maine to protect Americans living in Cuba, as well as the vast amount of American capital circulating between the economies of Cuba and the United States.
>>Sara Hart: Remember the Maine!
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh, we're doing it. I don't hear that very much anymore.
>>Sara Hart: Real rallying cry at the time, though. Tell us why.
>>Liam Salcuni: The main was one of two steel battleships in operation by the US Navy, and was sent as a statement to the Spanish ruling elite. The United States is watching you. This was a clear projection of power at a time when such behavior was not typical for the United States government. Docked in Havana Harbor, the Maine rested in the aquamarine waters of the Caribbean, ready to evacuate Americans in the event of a violent uprising against the Spanish.
>>Sara Hart: The aquamarine waters of the Caribbean. It's like we just walked into a travel brochure. Not for long, though. Okay. A month after it docks, the bow of the USS main was blown to pieces, killing 266 American sailors and soldiers. The ship sank within a few hours, and like you said, Liam, tensions were already high between Cuba, Spain, and the United States. This is the fuse that lit the Spanish American War. Two months after the Maine incident, the US formally declared war against the Spanish Empire and thus the start of the Spanish American War. News of the shipwrecked Maine spread across the United States like wildfire, and this was the high watermark of American-- what's known as American yellow journalism, a period characterized by highly sensationalized, often unsubstantiated newspaper headlines and stories. Incidentally, it gets its name yellow journalism from the color of a cartoon character regularly printed in these kind of cheap newspapers.
>>Liam Salcuni: I didn't know.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. There you go. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. So we know these names Hearst, Pulitzer.
>>Liam Salcuni: Pulitzer Price.
>>Sara Hart: Pulitzer Price. They were in fierce competition with one another over newspaper sales. This competition, and this was an era also during which they both of them would print the number of newspapers sold on the front page of the newspaper. So circulation numbers were something they were sort of bragging about and fighting over in the public arena. Keep it scoring.
>>Liam Salcuni: No shortage of egos.
>>Sara Hart: No shortage of egos there, right? And the competition led them to publishing these over the top, often inaccurate news stories that sold thousands of copies.
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh, what could go wrong?
>>Sara Hart: What could go wrong?
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh, yeah. And the result, extremely angry Americans, determined to intervene in what Secretary of State John Hay called, "our splendid little war." Hay wrote that in a letter to his friend, Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, he called it a splendid little war, a splendid little war. And Smedley, he's young, and he's one of the many who will believe that American intervention was necessary to stop the abuses of the Spanish regime and secure the freedom of Cuba. He's directly influenced and enraged by the stories that are circulating. The newspapers covering the sinking of the Maine capitalized on the chaos, spreading fear and hatred against the Spanish, whipping up American emotions. It gets crazy. Instead of reporting on the tragedy and loss of American lives--.
>>Sara Hart: It's not. It's not as much click bait. It doesn't sell as much.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right. Both Hearst and Pulitzer's periodicals focused on who was responsible, and both inferred that the Spanish had something to do with the wreckage of the Maine. Without any evidence.
>>Sara Hart: Wait, wait. With what evidence?
>>Liam Salcuni: No evidence. Zero evidence. Whose fault was it? We don't know yet, but we're gonna blame someone because we want to sell newspapers.
>>Sara Hart: The Spanish are standing there.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah. Two days after the wreck, Hearst, New York Journal published an article with the headline, "Destruction of the warship Maine, was the work of an enemy", end quote.
>>Sara Hart: Right. Okay, so one of the headlines said something about an infernal machine, I remember. Very James Bond. Turns out that it was probably not Spain, that it was probably an internal fire that ignited ammunition already on board.
>>Liam Salcuni: That's it.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: It was not Spain.
>>Sara Hart: Not-- turns out not Spain. Remember the Maine? No. Not Spain.
>>Liam Salcuni: Remember the Maine? Not Spain. Not an inside job, either.
>>Sara Hart: No, no. It was kind of an accident, actually.
>>Liam Salcuni: It's number-- only two steel battle you know, there's only two of them.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, so it was a big deal, and it's good to find someone to blame for it, but there's a lot going on down there. It could have been a sailor dropping his pipe in a coal bunker.
>>Liam Salcuni: All kinds of articles followed the explosion, inferring that Spain had planted a mine near the ship causing the explosion and subsequent wreckage. People in the United States were completely outraged, and Smedley was one of them. Judge magazine released an image of Uncle Sam between images of the Maine wreckage and pictures of emaciated Cuban civilians with the caption, "Remember the Main and Remember the starving Cubans."
>>Sara Hart: Sheesh. Pulling on some heartstrings. What a powerful combination of nationalistic sloganeering and a call to justice and mercy.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yep. There was even a special edition of the American flag, if we can call it that, that showed 45 stars and 13 stripes with "Remember the Maine" sewn on the front. Okay. Remember the Maine sewn on the front.
>>Sara Hart: Okay. I'm going to go no comment on that. It's clear Americans were outraged and a lot of this energy is being directed towards Spain. And tell me, are Hearst and Pulitzer making a lot of money off the tragedy?
>>Liam Salcuni: Absolutely.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, good. Good to know. That's consistent, at least.
>>Liam Salcuni: And military enlistment is skyrocketing.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: As a result of this news coverage, hundreds of thousands of men volunteer for military service, including our guy, Smedley Butler.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, it just goes to show how powerful popular media and news coverage can be.
>>Liam Salcuni: So true. It still is.
>>Sara Hart: Yep.
>>Liam Salcuni: Smedley is 16-years-old, furious at this news that the USS Maine has been sunk and at the injustices Cubans are facing at the hands of the Spanish, and he's compelled to join in the fight for Cuban liberation.
>>Sara Hart: Or so he thought.
>>Liam Salcuni: Exactly, so he thought. But he has to jump a huge hurdle. The minimum age of military enlistment is 18-years-old. So how does he pull this off? So first, he has to break the news to his parents.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: He's done with the uniforms and the socks at the Haverford School.
>>Sara Hart: The Fauntleroy.
>>Liam Salcuni: And the Fauntleroys and, wool, we're done with that. It's not all velvet anymore. He's ready to fight for something larger than himself. His mother, Maude Butler, was supportive of him going into the Marines. His father wasn't sure if this was the best option for the young heir to the Butler family name.
>>Sara Hart: And why was he joining the Marine Corps specifically?
>>Liam Salcuni: Well, believe it or not, at this point, the Marine Corps was tiny, only about 2,100 soldiers. The Army and the Navy had good numbers in the tens of thousands. But the Marines wanted people. Smedley and his mother Maude snuck out of the house while his father was asleep, took a six hour train ride to the Marine Corps barracks in Washington, DC; when they arrived, Smedley went into the barracks, spoke to the colonel commandant about his interest in the Marine Corps, lied about his age, and the rest, as they say, is history. Welcome aboard.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, so at the tender age of 16 years, Smedley Darlington Butler, became a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, with Mom's help.
>>Liam Salcuni: With Mom's help.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. And he had to go through boot camp, right?
>>Liam Salcuni: Well, sort of.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: Kind of. Katz notes in his work on Butler that after the first few days at "boot camp", "Smedley realized where he really was, a holding pen for Daddy's boys." He was with all the affluent proteges and, you know, of other politicians and well-connected Americans. So it's boot camp with an asterisk.
>>Sara Hart: Boot camp for people who knew what Fauntleroy seats were.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right. Exactly. Exactly. And who went to the Haverford School.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, boot camp light. Boot Camp gentle cycle. Yeah, they don't have that anymore. Paris, Island, or Pendleton boot camp is boot camp.
>>Liam Salcuni: Definitely a different time. The Marine Corps was sort of coming into its own, in a new way. The Marine Corps was born in 1775, but it was really reimagined and expanded during the early 20th century. So we're not only-- yeah, we're seeing America emerge as a global empire, we're also seeing the Marine Corps specifically transformed into this international global interventionist-.
>>Sara Hart: Fleet Marine force.
>>Liam Salcuni: Fleet Marine force.
>>Sara Hart: He needed more of that of here, like, empiring on the seas. He really did.
>>Liam Salcuni: So anyway, we're in 1898 and Smedley did not have what we would think of-- Marine Corps training was just not as standardized at this point, and the training of his small cohort lasted only six weeks. Today's boot camp is 13 weeks long. Smedley's drill instructor mostly schooled the recruits in memorizing regulations and organizing dress parades.
>>Sara Hart: Oh, not exactly full metal jacket. Okay, still--.
>>Liam Salcuni: Jelly Doughnut.
>>Sara Hart: Still some focus on discipline, compliance, attention to detail, right?
>>Liam Salcuni: That is likely true.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: But the 16-year-old Smedley Butler was fired up and ready to kick butt and take names. Okay. So, honestly, he was probably pretty poor. On the 4th of July 1898, no hot dogs were served. But orders came from the higher ups that they were being deployed to Cuba. Their destination, Guantanamo Bay. He was finally getting his shot.
>>Sara Hart: Okay. And that name, Guantanamo Bay, that name sticks out for us today, listeners. This, at the time, though, is not a US prison. No, it's a US naval base spanning 45 miles of coastline, sort of infamous at this point for its detention facility. When Smedley landed in 1898, the bay had already been seized by American forces because it's a pretty spectacular natural harbor, deep and sheltered. But there were no permanent structures of any kind. It was a beach. It was a fishing village, most recently occupied by Spain.
>>Liam Salcuni: And the US wants it.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: Occupied, yes. Not happily. It's actually a long history of occupation. They're initially home to the indigenous Tino people. Guantanamo is actually a Tino word that means "land between two rivers." However, numerous European powers have occupied Guantanamo, starting with the violent campaigns of Christopher Columbus in 1494.
>>Sara Hart: Mm hmm. A really beautiful bay.
>>Liam Salcuni: I honestly-
>>Sara Hart: I haven't been there, but I've seen pictures. It's pretty spectacular.
>>Liam Salcuni: Aquamarine Waters.
>>Sara Hart: Aquamarine Waters.
>>Liam Salcuni: Then, in the vein of European occupation, there's, you know, the British involved, the Spanish get involved. There's this British admiral named Edward Vernon who captures Guantanamo Bay from the Spanish in 1741 to build plantations using slave labor on the island. The Mount Vernon Estate.
>>Sara Hart: I've heard of that.
>>Liam Salcuni: Which became the residence of George Washington, GW, is named after Edward Vernon.
>>Sara Hart: Ah. Okay. Many European powers have exploited Cuba. That's what I'm getting out of this. And specifically Guantanamo Bay, destabilizing the local environment, engaging in genocidal campaigns against the native peoples in order to surprise, surprise, extract profits. Now, here comes the US in its Smedley Butler's first deployment, his first occupation on foreign soil. It's very exciting.
>>Liam Salcuni: Exactly. Katz notes that, quote, "Guantanamo was not only the first place he was deployed, but the first place US forces landed in the 1898 war that displaced incipient democracy, the invasion that kicked off the United States' scramble for empire", end quote. There had been a longstanding interest in the US colonizing Cuba. I mean, you know, Thomas Jefferson dreamed of annexing Cuba. Before the end of his second term, he wrote to the succeeding President James Madison, recommending that he annex Florida, Canada, and Cuba.
>>Sara Hart: Well, one out of three ain't bad.
>>Liam Salcuni: One out of three.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. That's an all right batting average.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Smedley and the Marines landed at Guantanamo Bay on July 10th, 1898. Most of the major engagements against the Spanish were already concluded, like Teddy Roosevelt's charge up Kettle Hill. The US military was segregated at this time and one part of Roosevelt's charge that he didn't talk about and the game changing role that the all Black ninth and tenth cavalry regiments played in that battle.
>>Sara Hart: Right, the Buffalo soldiers.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right. They received virtually no recognition for their bravery. They're absent from the famous photograph of Roosevelt and his rough riders, "rough riders", Just saying.
>>Sara Hart: Some sources say that Teddy Roosevelt had gotten himself and his rough riders pinned down as they advanced on Spanish lines, and it was the professional soldiers from the ninth and tenth regiments. They were professional. Roosevelt's were not. It was the ninth and tenth Buffalo soldiers, ninth and tenth regiments, Buffalo soldiers who got them out of that jam.
>>Liam Salcuni: That sounds about right.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: But got none of the credit.
>>Sara Hart: Right.
>>Liam Salcuni: Alright, but a couple of weeks later, something like 40 miles east of Roosevelt's famous charges, Smedley Butler, he arrives, and the Marines patrolled Guantanamo Bay amid the wreck of Spanish ships and infrastructure.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: Their duties were to patrol and fight off any remaining Spanish resistance. One day, when the sun set on camp, Butler's unit was out on night patrol. Cracks of gunfire rang out in the dark. Butler was struck with fear, and dove to the ground. But his commanding officer, a Marine Corps captain by the name of Mansel C. Goodrell, stood upright and continued moving. The guy was completely unfazed.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: Okay. And this had a significant and lasting impact on Butler, who had come to really admire the captain's leadership and bravery. And Goodrell really kind of looked after Butler. He's this young kid, really. I mean, truly, actually a kid.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah, he's 16-years-old.
>>Liam Salcuni: You know, he's giving a reassurance throughout this time in Guantanamo Bay. Goodrell, is a civil war veteran who shares stories with Butler of his engagements during the Civil War.
>>Sara Hart: So kind of a paternal figure to our 16-year-old young Mr. Butler. 16, though. I I mean, I can't get over that. And he's in an active war zone. It seems like it's diminishing a little bit, but active war zone, live fight.
>>Liam Salcuni: They're still technically at war. There's no armistice or truce yet. It must have been terrifying. Totally. Something that Goodrell imparted to the young Smedley was to always look after your men. And to be brave and steadfast in the face of imminent danger, a unit is only as brave and strong as its leader. Butler recalled later in life that, "whatever luck or skill I had in the soldiering business, I attribute to the teaching example of that splendid officer."
>>Sara Hart: Very gracious. Okay, so how did he fare? How was Smedley Butler's first deployment?
>>Liam Salcuni: Alright, well, it turns out that the scourge wasn't the Spanish resistance, necessarily, but disease and sickness.
>>Sara Hart: Scourge of so many armies.
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh, that's a classic case. Yeah, all throughout history. He was stricken with a debilitating fever just weeks into his deployment, as were many other marines and US soldiers in Cuba. And Goodrell was there again to comfort the sick soldier, gave him some cookies and pat his back.
>>Sara Hart: What a guy. There was some kind of special hot herbal tea they were sending around at that time. Something about the mosquitoes at this point. We've talked about this a little bit, the malarial situation going on in Cuba. I wonder his-- I wonder if Smiley Butler's fever was malarial.
>>Liam Salcuni: I think he's-- it's probably. Yeah. Because he would go through bouts of periodic sickness, maybe. I think you're up.
>>Sara Hart: Well, what a positive impact and how caring Goodrell was there, you know, leading under rifle fire, but also tending to the ailing, well rounded.
>>Liam Salcuni: Indeed. From this point, there wasn't much to do on the ground. Butler saw some action, though, on the water aboard the USS Resolute. The Resolute engaged enemy ships off the coast of Manzanillo, a strategic port on Cuba's southern coastline. After successfully holding Manzanillo, news arrived that an armistice was signed between Spain and the United States. The war was over, but America had crossed the Rubicon into international empire building.
>>Sara Hart: All right, thanks for tuning in to Snafu Bar a show about American military history and national myths. I'm Sarah Hart. I'm here with Liam Sal Cooney. Today, we are exploring the early career of one of the Marine Corps most decorated veterans, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, who entered the service just as the nation entered its imperial era. Let's close out today's show with a little bit on how things went after the Spanish American War of 1898.
>>Liam Salcuni: This is really the birth of the American Empire. The Spanish American War lasted only a few months. But as the result, for the United States, was a tremendous projection of power and influence around the world. The age of Empire had begun.
>>Sara Hart: For America.
>>Liam Salcuni: For America.
>>Sara Hart: Yes, at this point, the Spanish Empire also had possession of places like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, like, in addition to Cuba. And the US military deployed and seized those territories, too, all in the name of liberating these places from the Spanish, right? How'd that liberation go?
>>Liam Salcuni: Uh, short answer, not super well. Womp womp. The US intervention during the Spanish American War did not liberate these places.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: Which is super problematic because the United States went to war, under the pretense that they were liberating colonies from their colonial oppressors. Thousands of Americans enlisted, including Smedley Butler, under this impression. But it turned out to be far more complicated than that. Let's start with the US intervening in Cuba. Spain is exploiting the labor and life of Cuban citizens. This is true. Uncle Sam steps in to save the day, right?
>>Sara Hart: I've seen the pictures. That's what it looks like.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right? No. Hold on a second. Just before the turn of the 20th century, There are more wealthy Americans than ever before in the United States. They have some disposable income. Technology of mechanization in certain industries drove the price of goods down. One of these commodities was sugar.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, so we're looking at a lot of industrialization, the immediate effects of industrial capitalism, some commodities going down in the prices. And so begins the American love affair with sugar. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: Pretty much. 1866-1900, US sugar imports went from half a ton to 2.6 million tons of sugar annually.
>>Sara Hart: Holy Moly. That is back of the envelope calculation of 520 million% increase in 35 years.
>>Liam Salcuni: Sounds pretty-.
>>Sara Hart: Awesome. America grows a sweet tooth, and fast.
>>Liam Salcuni: Well, guess what? Where does most of the sugar-- where's the sugar coming from?
>>Sara Hart: Cuba.
>>Liam Salcuni: It's coming from Cuba. You've got it.
>>Sara Hart: Following. I'm following.
>>Liam Salcuni: Nailed it. And also Hawaii.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: The US Marines went there and deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani to protect foreign business interests and investments there in 1893. McKinley used the Spanish American War to annex Hawaii as a US protectorate in 1898. It's worth mentioning, too, that the tensions of the 1880s and 1890s, such as the populist movement, the active labor organizing and, you know, the tumultuous economic situations-- silver. These were things that were part of what drove politicians and business leaders to move into the international imperial phase. The belief that both securing cheap commodities and access to markets for manufactured goods would lead to general economic prosperity and allay future labor related violence, thus undermining labor organizing.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, keep them fat and happy and they won't make so much trouble.
>>Liam Salcuni: Exactly.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: Eventually--.
>>Sara Hart: I mean, keep them poor.
>>Liam Salcuni: Keep them poor.
>>Sara Hart: But keep them fed enough. Fed enough keep the cavities. Keep the cavities.
>>Liam Salcuni: Keep-- but no healthcare, and no dentistry. No dentists.
>>Sara Hart: No dentists.
>>Liam Salcuni: But eventually, places like Hawaii and the Philippines became major fueling stations for US cargo ships tapping into these lucrative Asian markets across the Pacific. That's an entire other episode. But it's related to this. A similar thing is happening in Cuba. Teddy Roosevelt had been pushing for war with Spain for years before the Spanish American War to specifically protect American investments in sugar plantations. With Spain out of the question, the Wall Street banking tycoons could heavily invest in the sugar industry. In turn, sugar, and so massive profits, would flow into the United States.
>>Sara Hart: The US couldn't annex Cuba. That was part of their deal, right? The Teller Amendment, which was added to the US Declaration of War, specified that Cuba would retain its independence after US intervention. This was pretty generous, right? This generous in its way. Well, a lot of what drove this decision and the decision not to incorporate the Philippines, Guam, or Puerto Rico into the United States was less generosity and more really over blatant racism.
>>Liam Salcuni: You can read the minutes. They're not hiding it. They're not hiding it.
>>Sara Hart: Right. This is not-- it's not innuendo. It's not a lot of interpreting. This is really clear. So many politicians in Washington and Americans across the country feared that incorporating Black, Hispanic, and Catholic populations into what they saw as the predominantly white and Protestant US would be a racial and cultural catastrophe.
>>Liam Salcuni: I wish this sounded less familiar. All of this would be codified by the Supreme Court in the infamous insular cases over the next couple of decades. And in these insular cases, the first one was decided in 1901. The court ruled that the US can control certain territories without incorporating them into the United States. This also means that these places and people do not enjoy the full protection of the Constitution but are fully withheld the power of the United States protectorates.
>>Sara Hart: Controlled, but no rights for you.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right. Which was this all about again in 1776?
>>Sara Hart: I think it was--
>>Liam Salcuni: No taxation without representation. Okay. But the US US wasn't ready to let Cuba go entirely. Instead, Congress threw together the Platt amendment, also in 1901. It stipulated that the US can intervene and invade Cuba at any time.
>>Sara Hart: All those cool aquamarine waters got to leave something out there for us.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: And which the US did invade it. It deployed Marines in 1912 to put down an uprising that was happening on American sugar plantations.
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh, look at that. Case in point. It also prohibited Cuba from making treaties with foreign governments other than the United States. Among other things, it mandated that Cuba sell or lease lands for naval operations to the United States, like Guantanamo Bay. The Platt Amendment was eventually repealed in 1934. That was FDR's good neighbor policy.
>>Sara Hart: Okay, right.
>>Liam Salcuni: But the trust was broken, and the damage was already done. And also the US in this treaty, it states that they get to retain Guantanamo Bay indefinitely. In other words-- or in other words, forever.
>>Sara Hart: Forever. Just the most beautiful sheltered natural harbor bay, just that one. We just want that one.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah. Okay, no wonder Cuban American relations are a little bit strained, and that really is just the beginning. We've got decades to go before we get to Castro and the Cold War and all of that. And yeah, we're not going to get there today.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah, with the Spanish American War, not a whole lot changed for the Cubans. I mean, Cuba was embroiled in this bloody fight for independence from Spain, only to have America come in as the new overseer. I mean, granted, there was less violence and brutality projecting on, you know, to the local population. So, things did change. The economic structure is becoming more integrated and international. You have Wall Street investors, banks, and big business descending on the island. Okay.
>>Sara Hart: So there were there was maybe less bloody violence, more economic exploitation.
>>Liam Salcuni: Yeah.
>>Sara Hart: So it wasn't like an independence level improvement, but it was an improvement in terms of beatings.
>>Liam Salcuni: Right.
>>Sara Hart: Okay. Migratory capital, right? Exactly. That's its own difficult situation, its own oppressive force, and it shows up from time to time here in the Snafu Bar.
>>Liam Salcuni: It does, unfortunately. You had figures like JP Morgan and Company, Sullivan and Cromwell, and the United Fruit Company buying land in Cuba and building sugar plantations. They invested in railroads, sugar mills, and other infrastructure to get rich off the island's sugar.
>>Sara Hart: Yep. Okay. And Smedley Butler, where's he in all this?
>>Liam Salcuni: Smedley Darlington Butler was hailed as a hero when he returned to his hometown. The local newspaper published a special story on him before his return. Reunited with friends and family, Butler took some time to rest and recuperate, but against his parents' wishes, could not be convinced to return to school.
>>Sara Hart: Oh, no more Haverford.
>>Liam Salcuni: No more Haverford. He returned as a 17-year-old veteran of Spanish American War. He had celebrated his 17th birthday shortly after arriving at Guantanamo Bay. His life as a United States Marine had just begun.
>>Sara Hart: As had America's overseas imperial ambitions.
>>Liam Salcuni: Absolutely. The Spanish American War began with Cuba, but quickly turned into a global operation with the US seizing Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, in a long and bloody conflict that cost around 200,000 Filipino lives. In all of these places around the world, people were yearning for sovereignty, and self-rule, and got blindsided by the United States retaining possession of their land as territories.
>>Sara Hart: The story of the United States in the Philippines is an especially difficult one, very bloody. Resistance to the US occupation erupted quickly into violent conflict. And so in April 1899, shortly after having returned to Pennsylvania, Smedley Butler, then a first lieutenant, was deployed once more with the Marines, this time to the Philippines.
>>Liam Salcuni: Which we definitely do not have time for today.
>>Sara Hart: But we're going to get to, right? We're going to get to that at some point.
>>Liam Salcuni: We're going to get to that.
>>Sara Hart: Yeah.
>>Liam Salcuni: We've come to the end of our time today.
>>Sara Hart: Okay.
>>Liam Salcuni: So, what have we learned? Smedley Darlington Butler, born to a well-to-do Quaker family from Pennsylvania had all the resources to live a clean and quiet life. But he chose something different. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at the outbreak of the Spanish American War and was deployed to Guantanamo Bay at the age of 16.
>>Sara Hart: Gosh, I mean, at the age of 16, so much going on with this really brief moment in America's history. It's just a really full time. The relationship between the news media, public opinion, and war, it's always been a complicated one utilizing whatever communication technologies were available. And with the Spanish American War, we see the beginnings of yellow journalism. It's a brand of um, of reporting that's got sensationalism, kind of peddling often unsubstantiated facts or inflammatory rumor in the interest of sales. And it is something that we see today. It's a habit of journalistic minds that definitely continued, and we can see the reasons.
>>Liam Salcuni: Oh, gosh, we sure do. Hearst and Pulitzer, the grandfathers of clickbait and fake news, fake news. In this moment in the nation's history, it's also the story of the beginning of an overseas American empire, driven by private investment and business interests, wars of liberation turned out to be wars for private profit. And Smedley Butler, our thread here, the figure who drew us into this story. He's there for all of it, at the beginning of his own career, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During the Spanish American War, this was his first deployment.
>>Sara Hart: First of what will turn out to be many, we'll see listeners that Smedley Darlington Butler ended up having a pretty epic career in the Marine Corps and after. His life story is compelling all on its own. It's also a life story that's exemplary in the degree to which you can trace major socioeconomic, historical, and geopolitical developments through it, a little like Forrest Gump. I mean, not in character, but in the way that his own experience threads through the Zeitgeist in ways that would have been there would have been just no way to know at the time. He ends up seeing so much unfold firsthand, so much of history. And so today in introducing him through the beginning of his career in the United States Marine Corps, we've also seen the United States introduction to global empire.
>>Liam Salcuni: We sure have. Enough for today?
>>Sara Hart: It's a lot, you know, I think maybe. And I am Sarah Hart, until next time. You've been listening to SNAFUBAR, a Cal Poly Humboldt production brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Our team includes me.
>> Jeff Crane: And me.
>> Abigail Smithson: Abigail Smithson, producer.
>> Liam Salcuni: Liam Salcuni, writer, researcher.
>> Roman Sotomayor: Roman Sotomayor, writer, researcher.
>> Abigail Smithson: You can find more information about SNAFUBAR on khsu.org.
Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
