The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Setting the Stage 161
Nicaragua and his command of the Marine Raiders in World War II, gained
the confidence of the Miskito Indians in a critical area of Sandino influence
through his patient cultivation of personal relations, including providing
security assurances to those who dropped their tenuous relationship with
Sandino and aided his Marines. These methods contrasted markedly with
fellow Marines who burned the houses of those suspected to be guerrilla
sympathizers and shot enough prisoners “trying to escape” that Marine
command felt compelled to issue orders of restraint. 111
Despite Edson’s strategic advances in cooperating successfully with
the Miskito to track down and upend Sandino insurgents, his patient and
indigenous- based methods were not adopted by the rest of the Corps.
Worse still, his assurances of security were not respected by higher officers,
and the Miskito were left to their fate after Edson was pulled out. 112
Edson’s approach required careful cultivation of relationships rather than
destruction of goods—an approach that ran contrary to Marines’ hardwired
bias for quick action. Edson’s strategically sound methods, despite
being field tested by a well- respected officer, remained extraordinary rather
than becoming the norm.
In less kinetic areas, abuses were still widely felt, sometimes flaring to
unconscionable levels but most often tending toward obnoxious rudeness,
racist epithets, and disrespect rather than outright brutality. 113 Marines had
to be barred from the local cantinas in Nicaragua where they were prone
to get drunk during outings “terminating either in arguments, fistic encounters
or a visit to the commanding officer and eventually the calaboose.” 114
Attempting to warn fellow Marines off such behavior, 1st Lt. Robert Kilmartin
cautioned that although assaulting a citizen of the Dominican Republic
is a “small matter,” it will get big publicity. 115 The culmination of “do- nots”
emphasized in the Marines’ Small Wars Manual provides a window into
other unhelpful practices pursued at the time: “When passing or halting in
the vicinity of dwellings occupied by peaceful natives, do not take fruit, eggs,
or other things without fair payment; do not gamble or drink with natives;
do not enter native houses without clearly understood invitation; do not
assume a hostile attitude.” 116
The immediate failing for the Corps was not in the preexisting prejudice
of Marines—this came as part and parcel of a racist nation offering
up some of her most caustic members to leatherneck ranks. The failing was
one of Marine Corps leadership as demonstrated by its lackluster effort
to discipline, and therefore restrain or eliminate, abusive behavior. Marine
leadership recognized the behavior of Marines as unfavorable but made few
serious efforts to curb it. The Corps’s initial limited effort entailed a mostly
fruitless search for linguistically proficient and nonracist Marine personnel
for officer posts in the various guardias, alongside a charade of limited and
dramatically uneven redress of sometimes very serious grievances (destruction
of property, rape, torture, murder) by a court structure run by Marines