Tropic of Chaos_ Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence - Christian Parenti [122]
14 Captain E. D. Swinton, D.S.O., R.E., The Defense of Duffer’s Drift (Washington, DC: US Infantry Association, 1916), 9.
15 Swinton, The Defense of Duffer’s Drift, 36.
16 Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998).
17 For more on this, see Dunbar Ortiz, “Indigenous Rights and Regional Autonomy in Revolutionary Nicaragua,” Latin American Perspectives 14, no. 1 (winter 1987): 43–66; Jane Freeland, “Nationalist Revolution and Ethnic Rights: The Miskitu Indians of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast,” Third World Quarterly 11, no. 4 (October 1989): 166–190. A famous innovator of small-war tactics and doctrine was Maj. Gen. Merritt A. Edson (USMC), who led, and later wrote about, a 1928 campaign to pacify Nicaragua’s Rio Coco.
18 On the last example, see the excellent article by Shane Bauer, “Iraq’s New Death Squad,” The Nation, June 22, 2009.
19 United States Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940), 2.
20 This is from a report from the Brady brigade commander dated October 1919, quoted in Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 105.
21 Like the cavalry, the marines, emphasizing small mobile units, adopted local methods of transportation—on rivers, mountain trails, or country roads. Resupply was limited, and marines tended to live off the land—which is to say, the local population. Discussing marine suppression of rebellion in Haiti during America’s intermittent fourteen-year occupation there, Lester Langley gives this description of tactics: “Marine commanders in the guard had to adapt to rebel tactics. A patrol could travel twenty to thirty miles in a day, moving single file along trails flanked by dense growth, stopping usually at midafternoon to rest. Since pack mules ordinarily moved slower than men, animals were limited to the minimum necessary for carrying blanket, rolls, food, and ammunition. . . . Everything was sacrificed to speed on the trail, to having men in condition to fight. . . . What could not be scavenged was flown in by the air squadron.” Lester D. Langley, The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934 (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2002), 207. This was the age of gun boat diplomacy, and the manual refers explicitly to the imperial nature of such engagements: “Small wars, generally being the execution of the responsibilities of the President in protecting American interests, life and property abroad, are therefore conducted in a manner different from major warfare. In small wars, diplomacy has not ceased to function and the State Department exercises a constant and controlling influence over the military operations. The very inception of small wars, as a rule, is an official act of the Chief Executive who personally gives instructions without action of Congress.”
22 Louis Gannett, “In Haiti,” The Nation, September 28, 1927.
23 Schmidt, Maverick Marine, 2.
24 Ernesto Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1998), 19.
25 Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 10.
26 Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, 10–11.
27 Danilo Valladares, “Youth Gangs—Reserve Army for Organized Crime,” Inter Press Service, September 21, 2010.
28 Dennis Rodgers, “Living