For Guidance in Iraq, Marines Rediscover A 1940s Manual

Thursday, April 8th, 2004

I’ve been meaning to read the Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, ever since I read The Savage Wars of Peace. For Guidance in Iraq, Marines Rediscover A 1940s Manual discusses the decades-old text:

In its three-week drive to Baghdad last year, the U.S. military relied heavily on satellite-guided bombs and supersonic jets. But now it is looking to this anachronistic book for some answers. The 446-page manual was born out of three decades of hard-won experience. From 1898 to 1934, the Marines fought a number of small wars, in the Philippines, Cuba, Honduras, China, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. They clashed with guerrillas, built constabularies and held elections. Then, in 1940, a group of Marines set out to capture in writing the lessons of those battles.

One year after their book was finished, the U.S. found itself embroiled in World War II, and the manual was forgotten. The manual was classified until 1972. Thus, in Vietnam, where it might have been useful, it wasn’t widely distributed and wasn’t much read.

I remember being puzzled that Vietnam could happen when the Marines had a text ready to describe how to fight a “small war” correctly. I assumed that the army simply ignored the Marine Corp. I didn’t realize the Small Wars Manual was classified and hard to find.

The Marines are drafting an updated text.

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Gaikokumaniakku: “…’robber-baron capitalism’ was a rhetorical cudgel…” Consider how the USA built railroads. Self-serving crony capitalists got handouts of public land, then used that seed capital to build immense private wealth. These are not the people I point to when I want to indicate capitalism done properly. Jim probably knows a lot more about capitalism than I do, and probably could teach me, but probably has better things to do with his time. If anyone wants to chime in with book recommendations,...
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Jim: As far as I can tell, “robber-baron capitalism” was a rhetorical cudgel used by the power center that established the Federal Reserve System, an hereditary banking oligarchy, against ordinary self-made industrial magnates.
Gaikokumaniakku: The 19th century glorified robber-baron capitalism along with other myths of individual heroes. They forgot that Newton said he was standing on the shoulders of giants — and of course they also forgot that when Newton said that, he was referencing a long string of writers who had used the phrase for hundreds of years, back to Bernard of Chartres: “We are like dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by...
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Gaikokumaniakku: I greatly enjoyed both Runaway and Looker in the 1980s. Marginally relevant link: Starring the Computer: Computers in Movies and Television Starring the Computer: Computers in Runaway (1984)
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Isegoria: It looks like Looker is on YouTube!
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TRX: Crichton usually got his computer stuff correct, though. He picked up a degree in “computer graphics” while he was getting his M.D. at Harvard. When he decided he didn’t care for doctoring, he went to Hollywood and made more computer-ish movies than doctor-ish ones. I only discovered “Runaway” earlier this year; I thought I was familiar with all of Crichton’s movies, but apparently not. I don’t remember ever seeing any mention of it anywhere.
Isegoria: Crichton clearly had little interest in the details of weapons. In the movie, a household robot goes rogue and acquires a revolver — which makes a pump-action shotgun racking sound before each shot and leaves a ragged two-inch hole in the drywall. Sigh. So I’m not surprised he gets his warships mixed up.
Lucklucky: “battleship Sheffield” It was a mere destroyer not a battleship…

Isegoria

For Guidance in Iraq, Marines Rediscover A 1940s Manual

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