President McKinley, who had tried to purchase Cuba from Spain in 1897, interpreted “stability” in Cuba to mean that property relations would stay largely intact. intervention was soon directed at curtailing the social changes for which Cubans had been fighting along with their independence. For propaganda purposes, the United States attributed victory to its own troops, and ignored the much longer struggle of Cubans for their own independence. Army’s short campaign of ground combat was already essentially over, and Spain was forced to relinquish its claims to Cuba. When Butler landed in Cuba, he arrived at Guantánamo Bay. Together, they show the force of Butler’s critique, and some of its limitations. Sometimes they reveal how dramatically the world has changed. Sometimes Katz’s visits to Butler’s grounds reveal the ways in which empire has hardly relaxed its grasp. In Gangsters of Capitalism, Katz follows Butler through the archives and on foot, retracing Butler’s path across the globe: from Cuba to the Philippines, to Nicaragua, to Haiti. Katz’s engaging new book is an opportunity to correct for the omission. If you missed your youthful window for Butleriana-either by not being a member of the Marine Corps or by not devoting a shelf in your dorm room to the collected works of Chomsky-Jonathan M. Famous in his day, the subject of fiction and film, he retired with two Medals of Honor and a greater number of nicknames-Old Gimlet Eye, the Leatherneck’s Friend, the Fighting Quaker-that testified to his place in the culture. His military career would take him from Cuba to China to Central America, where he became a legend in the Marine Corps, representing martial valor and virtue. When he read of the explosion of the USS Maine in the Havana harbor in 1898-which the “yellow journalism” of the era painted as a Spanish attack-he decided to enlist in the Marines. “I clenched my fists when I thought of those poor Cuban devils being starved and murdered by the beastly Spanish tyrants,” he wrote later. In spite of the Quaker tradition of pacifism, Butler believed in the mission. The United States promised it was entering the fight to free the remaining Spanish overseas colonies from tyranny. He was 16 years old when the Spanish-American War broke out. Both were prominent families, but the young Butler would not pursue a career in politics. The name reflects Butler’s Pennsylvania Quaker heritage-his father, Thomas Butler, was a congressman in the seat once held by his wife’s father, Smedley Darlington.
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