U.S. Miitary Followed Illegal Orders to Attack Peaceful Unarmed WWI Veteran Protesters
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” — Edmund Burke
America the Battlefield
November 22, 2013
by Tim Pope
When in history class did you ever learn of the Bonus Army marching on Washington, D.C.? When did you read about it any of your history books? You didn't. For, as Winston Churchill truthfully said, “History is written by the victors.”
In the spring and summer months of 1932, Washington was under siege by over 10,000 unemployed veterans of World War I from all over the country, who were in desperation due to the fallout of the Great Depression, with tens of thousands more on their way. Some estimates put the number of marchers at approximately 43,000 people. They were the Bonus Army, veterans who were promised a cash bonus sometime in the future by the U.S. Government in recompense for their service and sacrifice to the nation.
Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army Sergeant.
Depicted in the following video is then-retired U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler, America's most decorated soldier and author of War Is A Racket who, shortly after retiring from a lauded career exposed and brought down a corporate fascist plot to seize control of the White House and overthrow the U.S. Government via a military coup d'état.
Smedley Butler addressed the veterans of the Bonus Army as a call-to-action. He admonished the eager veterans, telling them, “It’s time you woke up—it’s time you realized there’s another war on. It’s your war this time. Now get in there and fight.” Here is a transcript of his speech, which was published in the Veterans of Foreign War's magazine Foreign Service in December, 1933.
Here is the video, entitled US military attacks demonstrating American War Veterans Bonus Army (6:53)
These men who gathered in Washington, D.C. demanded cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. It was an occupation of our nation's capitol by honorable men who wanted what was promised them, but who didn't see the fruits of that promise being fulfilled. Much the same as the incalculable lies, deceptions, distortions and failed promises of our current administration.
President Hoover was left to deal with the veterans when the Senate rejected their demands to keep its promise. The marchers stayed, occupying central Washington in accordance with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
On July 16th of 1932, the last day Congress was in session, thousands of angry veterans surrounded the Capitol in response to the Senate's refusal to pay them what was promised. The situation came to a head and Washington was on edge. The president ordered by decree the evacuation of the veterans from the public land and the gates to the area of Pennsylvania Avenue closed.
Troops led by General Douglas MacArthur, with his aide, then-Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, were sent into the affected area. 200 armed cavalrymen were sent in on horseback. Behind them came 400 infantrymen, followed up by tanks and armored vehicles. The defiant MacArthur, nicknamed Dougout Doug, disregarded the orders to not advance and treasonously referred to his advancement against the unarmed American veterans as a “military operation.”
Then-Major George S. Patton, who led the Army cavalry, ordered his men to draw their sabers and don gas masks. Tear gas grenades and smoke bombs were hurled at the unarmed veterans, and infantrymen advanced with rifles and fixed bayonets. They were attacked mercilessly and forced out of their makeshift camps, their shelters and personal possessions burned to ashes by uniformed military troops.
In the words of a journalist in the 1932 news dispatch, “The orders of the president must be obeyed, and the roaring flames sound the death nell to the fantastic Bonus Army, an end so disasterously in the shadow of the beautiful dome of the Capitol of the United States of America.”
One reporter wrote, “The blaze was so big it lit the whole sky, a nightmare come to life.”
The veterans fled the scene to keep from getting killed by the advancing soldiers.
This was the answer to the plight of honorable veterans who served in our nation's armed forces, a disastrous end. All they wanted was the compensation that was promised them for service rendered to their country, at a time when they needed it most. And to the active duty soldiers who carried out the “lawful orders” of the president and their superior officers, as we saw at Nuremberg, even though it was merely a show trial to cover for Project Paperclip, “Just following orders” was a non-defense for treason.
The morning after the military siege against unarmed veterans on U.S. soil, public sentiment understandably took a turn for the worse against President Herbert Hoover. He was rightly considered a traitor, having ordered a military operation against our nation's heroes who fought in the World War, the brothers-in-arms of the military men who were ordered to infringe on their Creator-endowed rights, attack and rout them from the District of Columbia.
What have we learned by this?
Never say that it can't happen here. Nor allow any misinformed American whose mind is tainted with an education comprised of revisionist history to falsely claim the same. After all, it can happen here — and it will happen again — because human nature doesn't change, and history repeats itself for those who don't know and understand its parallels.
There was the Kent State massacre on May 4th, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on hundreds of fleeing unarmed student protestors, killing four students and wounding nine others. One of them suffered permanent paralysis.
There was the Ruby Ridge massacre, the illegal ambush and deadly confrontation in northern Idaho in 1992 against Randy Weaver by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the United States Marshals Service, which resulted in the murder of Weaver's son Sammy and his wife Vicki.
There was the February 28 - April 19, 1993 siege on the Mount Carmel ranch of the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, where the U.S. Army's Delta Force commando unit, and agents of the FBI and the BATF, murdered more children than were killed at the Sandy Hook school shooting.
More recently, there was the rejection of the White House to a request allowing World War II veterans, our greatest generation, to visit their own memorial in Washington D.C. during the so-called “government shutdown”.
The National Park Service workers then erected barricades around the WWII memorial to keep veterans out, a memorial which was predominantly funded by private donations. However, the WWII veterans succeeded in breaching the barricades the Obama administration installed around their memorial.
There was also the incident where police arrested and detained numerous Vietnam veterans during a vigil at a war memorial in New York City after the peaceful veteran protesters refused to adhere to an unconstitutionally decreed 10:00pm curfew.
The absolute contempt for our nation's veterans and American citizens employing their constitutionally-protected rights is nothing new. It began long ago and has only escalated under the current administration. Also, the mockery and betrayal of our representatives' Oaths of office is not only a leftist progressive ideologue. It is a bipartisan agenda.
For instance, the Department of Homeland Security’s report on Rightwing Extremism, Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, which was not intended for public scrutiny but was thankfully leaked to the press in 2009, was produced during the Bush administration. A quick check of the PDF document’s properties reveals that it was created on January 23, 2007. Think Progress reported on April 15, 2009 that “the report, along with an earlier report on radicalized left-wing groups, was actually requested by the Bush administration”.
As you can see, the agenda is a product of our one-party system disguising itself as a two-party system, the system which Lew Rockwell, libertarian founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, said has become “two wings on the same bird of prey.”
And why does that matter in regards to this particular report on “Rightwing Extremism”? It matters because its wording was designed to portray disgruntled returning American veterans as anti-government extremists, dangerous and potentially violent terrorists, and thus scare-off and balkanize their supporters. It was produced specifically as part of a larger effort to demonize and eliminate all government opposition, regardless of political persuasion.
That is the name of the game, to eliminate all who are opposed to the massive overreach, corruption, fraud, malfeasance, subterfuge and hidden agenda of the government.
Identification, vilification, nullification and ultimately elimination.
For the love of money is the root of ALL evil, and the control of money is the control of ALL evil.
“Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.” — Mark Twain
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