Was Smedley Butler representative of a radical trend in Depression-era Marines?
Were the radical left views of General Smedley “War is a Racket” Butler more widespread in the Marine Corps than we remember? I ask because I was reading a history of the 1932 Bonus March on Washington by disgruntled World War I vets, and was surprised to see that the Army didn’t want the Marines ...
Were the radical left views of General Smedley "War is a Racket" Butler more widespread in the Marine Corps than we remember?
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Were the radical left views of General Smedley “War is a Racket” Butler more widespread in the Marine Corps than we remember?
I ask because I was reading a history of the 1932 Bonus March on Washington by disgruntled World War I vets, and was surprised to see that the Army didn’t want the Marines at the barracks and 8th and I SW in D.C. called out to help, supposedly out of fear that some of them “would side with the revolutionaries.” (p. 143)
You know, typical left-wing jarheads.
Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1
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