Zero Foxtrot

TOP 10 SMEDLEY BUTLER QUOTES

Major General Smedley Butler was one of the most decorated Marines in American history. He earned two Medals of Honor, spent more than three decades fighting America's wars, and then spent the rest of his life questioning who those wars truly served.

Here are 10 of Smedley Butler's most famous quotes on war, government, money, and power.

1. "War is a racket. It always has been."

2. "I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service... and during that period I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."

3. "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914."

4. "I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in."

5. "I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912."

6. "I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916."

7. "I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903."

8. "Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."

9. "The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag."

10. "There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights."

Whether you agree with Butler or not, these weren't the words of a protester, politician, or college professor. They were the words of a Marine General looking back on the wars he fought and the truth he saw.

Rockefeller Commission Report
June 6, 1975.
Central Intelligence Agency

In December 1974, the New York Times exposed a massive CIA operation collecting information on Americans inside the United States. The public reaction was strong enough that President Gerald Ford created a commission to investigate what had actually been happening. When the Rockefeller Commission delivered its report on June 6, 1975, it revealed how little respect the intelligence community had for constitutional limits if they interfered with what they wanted to do.
They discovered Operation CHAOS, a domestic intelligence program that monitored anti-war organizations and maintained files on thousands of Americans. They uncovered decades of mail surveillance where CIA officers photographed, copied, and physically opened letters sent to and from American citizens.

The deeper they dug, the crazier it got.

Investigators found evidence connected to MKULTRA, a collection of Cold War programs exploring interrogation, behavior modification, and mind control. Government-funded researchers experimented with L*D, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other techniques in an attempt to understand how human behavior could be manipulated. Some participants volunteered. Others never knew they were part of an experiment.
Unwitting civilians were secretly dosed with L*D. Psychiatric patients were used as test subjects. Prisoners were subjected to experiments they could not refuse. Some historians have alleged that children were involved in these programs. The exact scope remains disputed because many records were destroyed, but the allegations have persisted for decades.
What made the report remarkable wasn't one rogue operation. It was the pattern. Programs created for temporary purposes expanded. Authorities meant to be limited became routine. Secrecy made oversight nearly impossible, and by the time the public learned what had happened, many of these activities had been running for years.
Sometimes the most unbelievable conspiracy theories turn out to be government investigations waiting a few years for the paperwork to become public.

Lyman Lemnitzer
Operation Northwoods
March 1962, Washington D.C.

In the early 1960s, Cold War tensions were rising fast. The Bay of Pigs invasion had failed, Fidel Castro was still in power, and Cuba was becoming an increasingly important Soviet ally just ninety miles from the Florida coast. Many military leaders believed direct action against Cuba was becoming inevitable. The problem was that the American public didn't want another war. Sounds familiar, I know.
In March of 1962, senior officials within the Department of Defense produced a proposal known as Operation Northwoods. The document was reviewed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer before being forwarded to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. What they proposed wasn't an invasion plan. It was a collection of ideas designed to create public support for one. Up and to include the killing of American civilians and military.
The documents discussed incidents that could be blamed on Cuba and then used to justify military action. Some proposals involved staged attacks, manufactured evidence, and orchestrated acts of sabotage. One particularly surprising recommendation that stood out was: "We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba."

The part that always stands out to me is who was involved. These weren't fringe actors operating in the shadows. These were some of the most senior military leaders in the United States discussing ways public opinion might be shaped to support a war that many already believed should happen.

President Kennedy rejected Operation Northwoods and the plans were never implemented. The documents disappeared into classified archives and remained hidden from public view for decades.

There is no evidence that Operation Northwoods had anything to do with Kennedy's assassination. What is true is that twenty months after rejecting one of the most controversial military proposals in American history, Kennedy was dead, and the proposal remained hidden from the public for decades.
Guantanamo Incidents (continued)

"Whistleblower" Edward Snowden
Global Surveillance Disclosure
Hong Kong
NSA, CIA, U.S Intelligence Community

Edward Snowden flew out of Hawaii carrying secrets that would ignite one of the largest intelligence controversies in modern history. He wasn't a spy in the traditional sense. He wasn't recruited by a foreign government. He wasn't caught passing documents in a parking garage. He was an NSA contractor and former CIA employee with broad access to classified networks.

Over months, he copied an enormous collection of highly classified intelligence documents and left the United States.
In Hong Kong, he handed those files to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others. The documents revealed surveillance programs that most Americans had never heard of like the bulk collection of their phone metadata, massive interceptions of internet traffic, and intelligence partnerships connecting continents under the ocean through tapped fiber optic cables.

For years, government officials had reassured the public that surveillance was targeted, limited, and subject to oversight. The documents painted a far more complicated picture. Snowden's argument was simple. Citizens cannot consent to programs they do not know exist. If the government was collecting vast amounts of information on ordinary people, then the public had a right to know and decide whether those powers were acceptable.

He knew what he was doing. He knowingly exposed classified intelligence programs. He knew it would end his career, make him a fugitive, and prevent him from ever going home. It was a big deal. It triggered hearings, intelligence reforms, a global debate about privacy, government power, and the limits of surveillance in the digital age.

Ruby Ridge Standoff
August 1992, Boundary County Idaho

It started with a shotgun. Not a bombing or hostage crisis. Two illegally modified shotguns sold to an ATF informant.
Former Green Beret Randy Weaver lived with his family in a remote cabin on Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Federal authorities had approached him through an informant to recruit him to provide information on extremist groups. Weaver never became an informant, so the fi****ms case moved forward instead.
Confusion surrounding the appearance date led Weaver to miss court. A bench warrant was issued. What could have remained a relatively routine federal fi****ms case shifted into something sinister. U.S. Marshals started surveillance operations around the property shortly after.
On August 21, 1992, that tension exploded in the woods below the cabin. A reconnaissance team of U.S. Marshals encountered Randy Weaver's son Sammy, family friend Kevin Harris, and the family's dog. Exactly who fired first remains disputed. What is not disputed is the dog, Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan, and 14 yr old Sammy Weaver were dead.
The FBI Hostage Rescue Team arrived the following day. Special rules of engagement were approved that went far beyond normal deadly force standards. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi fired at Randy Weaver, wounding him. A second shot struck Kevin Harris and then killed Vicki Weaver as she stood in the cabin doorway holding her infant baby. Vicki Weaver was unarmed.
The standoff continued for days before negotiators finally convinced the survivors to surrender. When the smoke cleared, investigators began asking questions about the FBI's rules of engagement. Federal investigations identified serious failures in planning, leadership, and judgment. In 1995, the Weaver family received a $3.1 million settlement from the federal government.
The original crime involved two illegally modified shotguns (requested for by the ATF). The final tally was a dead federal marshal, a dead fourteen-year-old boy, a dead mother holding her infant daughter, years of investigations, millions in settlements, and another fracture in the public's trust. Sometimes "The Land of the free", teeters between slogan and reality.

SWITCHBLADE 300 Loitering Munition
2011-Present.
Ukraine, Middle East, and Global Conflict Zones

For most of modern military history, reconnaissance and firepower were separate jobs. A scout identified the enemy, artillery fired the rounds, or aircraft dropped the bombs. The entire system depended on passing information from one person to another before the target disappeared. The process worked, but it was slow. Every handoff created friction. The Switchblade reduced the entire process into a single operator.
The Switchblade 300 entered service in 2011 as a lightweight loitering munition designed for small units. Instead of calling for indirect fire or waiting for air support, an operator could launch the system from a portable tube, search an area with a live video feed, identify a target, and strike it using the same platform. The scout and the weapon became the same thing.

At first, many viewed systems like the Switchblade as a niche capability. Useful in certain situations, but hardly revolutionary.
Ukraine changed that perception by becoming a laboratory for drone warfare. Commercial quadcopters, FPV drones, loitering munitions, and persistent surveillance systems flooded the battlefield. Positions that once remained hidden for hours or days could now be discovered in minutes. Artillery crews found themselves hunted almost as soon as they fired. The battlefield was becoming transparent.

For decades, the ability to locate and destroy targets beyond line of sight belonged to organizations with enormous budgets and complex support structures. A precision strike often required aircraft, artillery batteries, intelligence assets, and layers of coordination. Now many of those effects could be generated by a small team carrying equipment in their packs.

The Switchblade helped mark a turning point in that evolution because it showed how much combat power could be placed in the hands of a single operator with modern technology.

Typhoon Cobra - The Pacific's Deadliest Ambush
18 DECEMBER 1944
PHILIPPINE SEA
U.S. THIRD FLEET

The Japanese couldn't find them, but the typhoon had no such problem. In December 1944, Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet was one of the most powerful naval forces ever assembled. The fleet had spent months battering Japanese positions across the Pacific and was preparing for the next phase of the war. Hundreds of ships, thousands of sailors, and enough firepower to level cities.
The first problem to present itself was fuel. Destroyers were running low, refueling operations were underway, and weather reports coming from different directions painted an incomplete picture. The fleet believed it was maneuvering around a tropical storm. Instead, it was sailing directly into the middle of it.
On the morning of December 18, Typhoon Cobra arrived. Waves towered over destroyers. Ships rolled so violently that some crews could no longer remain standing. Aircraft broke loose on carrier decks and smashed into each other like toys thrown across a garage floor. Fuel lines ruptured. Equipment tore free. Men fought just to stay inside their own ships. The worst hit were three destroyers. Hull, Monaghan, and Spence. All three capsized and disappeared beneath the waves.
The irony was brutal. These ships had survived combat against the Imperial Japanese Navy only to be sunk by wind, water, and physics. Nearly 800 sailors died and more than 100 aircraft were destroyed or damaged.
Dozens of ships suffered serious damage. No enemy attack caused any of it. The investigation that followed found no single villain. Forecasting technology was limited. Information was incomplete. Operational demands were real. But the disaster exposed a hard truth that every military eventually learns. Nature gets a vote.
Veterans understand this from experience. The mission is never just the enemy. Terrain, weather, and logistics are equally important. Ignore any one of them long enough and they become part of the fight.

Operation Anaconda
March 2002, Shah-I-Kot Valley, Afghanistan

The helicopters crossed the mountains expecting to chase a broken enemy. Instead they flew into hell, surrounded by guns. Coalition planners believed the fighters hiding in the Shah-i-Kot Valley were retreating remnants after months of bombing and pressure following the invasion of Afghanistan. The assumption was simply to push conventional forces into the valley floor, block escape routes, and crush whatever resistance remained.

But the enemy had plans of their own. Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters had spent weeks preparing fighting positions in caves, ridgelines, rock walls, and elevated terrain overlooking the landing zones. They knew exactly where helicopters would have to approach. They knew where troops would bunch up after insertion. They understood something armies keep relearning through history. High ground matters.
The first helicopters started taking fire almost immediately. Machine guns opened up from the ridges. RPGs streaked through thin mountain air. Mortars started walking into exposed valley positions while troops tried to orient themselves after landing. Some helicopters limped away shot full of holes. Others barely made it onto the ground before crews started unloading wounded. The valley floor became the trap.
Men climbed frozen slopes carrying machine guns, radios, ammunition, and casualties at altitude while under fire from fighters dug into the rock and snow above them. Helicopter resupply became dangerous if not impossible.

Operation Anaconda eventually succeeded because coalition airpower and reinforcement capacity were overwhelming once fully engaged. B-52 strikes, AC-130 gunships, close air support, and relentless pressure slowly took over. But it wasn't without consequence.

The KIA were:

Technical Sergeant John Chapman
Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts
Sergeant First Class Matthew Commons
Staff Sergeant Marc Anderson
Sergeant First Class Scott Sather
Specialist Marc Tyler Anderson
Sergeant First Class Stephen Kanes
Sergeant First Class William Bennett

25 OCTOBER 1944
WORLD WAR II
TAIWAN STRAIT
USS Tang

USS Tang had already turned the Taiwan Strait into a graveyard before the last torpedo left the tube. By October 1944, Tang was one of the deadliest submarines in the Pacific. With an aggressive captain and experienced crew, they had numerous patrols with confirmed sinkings.
That night started with a successful ambush. Tang surfaced for a nighttime attack against a convoy moving through the strait. Torpedoes were already in the water. Targets were burning as Japanese escorts scattered. The crew was running hard inside the submarine trying to keep pace with the firing solutions while O’Kane maneuvered for another shot in the dark.

But the last torpedo malfunctioned.

American submariners feared “circular runners” for a reason. A torpedo gyro could fail after launch and send the weapon curving back toward the submarine that fired it. There was almost no time to react once somebody spotted the wake changing direction.
O’Kane ordered emergency power and a hard turn, trying to outrun it. But submarines are not fast moving vessels. Especially at close range, in darkness, with seconds to decide whether the glowing wake in the water is real or imagined. The torpedo slammed into Tang near the stern.
The submarine sank so fast most of the crew never had a chance. Men were thrown into darkness, flooding compartments, ruptured batteries, steam, fuel oil, and collapsing pressure. Inside submarines, mechanical failure does not stay mechanical for long, it becomes drowning immediately.

Only nine men escaped. They used the flooded escape trunk and shot themselves toward the surface one by one from nearly 180 feet down. Several suffered burst lungs and decompression injuries. The survivors floated for hours in black oil-covered water while Japanese ships circled nearby pulling prisoners from the sea.
Tang finished the war with one of the highest confirmed sink records in the U.S. Navy. And in the end, after surviving depth charges, escorts, storms, and months of combat patrols, the boat was killed by its own final shot.

S.O.G. "Studies and Observations Group"
Vietnam War November 1968
MACV-SOG Recon Team Idaho
Near the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The irony is that “Studies and Observations Group” sounds like nerds writing reports somewhere in Saigon, when in reality it became one of the highest casualty-rate orgs in U.S. military history. SOG veterans joke that the name itself was part of the camouflage. Quiet title. Extremely violent work. Rule #1 - Don't Get Caught.
SOG recon teams crossed borders the United States officially denied crossing. Tiny patrols pushed deep into Laos to watch truck routes, track troop movement, call air strikes, and get out before the jungle swallowed them. Sometimes that plan lasted hours. Sometimes minutes. It was another example of the government saying one thing and blatantly doing another.

John Stryker Meyer was leading one of those teams when the jungle erupted around him. The NVA soldiers would hit their patrols with extreme violence at close range. The Ho Chi Minh trail was their lifeline and they protected it like a swarm of hornets.
This was the reality of SOG that people misunderstand. They were not clearing terrain, they were surviving detection inside enemy-controlled territory while massively outnumbered. A recon team might have two or three Americans and a handful of indigenous fighters moving through areas packed with entire NVA units protecting the trail.
The indigenous troops carried an enormous part of the war. Montagnards and Nùng fighters tracked movement, carried wounded, spotted ambushes, and died in numbers history barely recorded. Meyer has always been very direct about that. No fake lone-wolf mythology or pretending Americans did it alone.
When SOG called for help, extraction helicopters knew they would be stepping into an active fight. Sometimes aircraft left with bullet holes and sometimes they did not leave at all. Pilot David Nelson from the Stay Zero Podcast ep 10 was shot down while trying to rescue another down pilot, and spent 8 days in Cambodia evading capture.
SOG Men were operating at the edge of survivability to disrupt the enemy's supply chains, while the government actively denied their existence.