Smedley Butler

Smedley Darlington Butler (1881–1940) was a major general in the United States Marine Corps, one of only nineteen men to have received the Medal of Honor twice and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in American history. He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, into a prominent Quaker family; his father Thomas Butler later served thirty-one years in the United States House of Representatives.

He left school at sixteen to enlist as a Marine second lieutenant during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and went on to active service in the Philippines, the Boxer Rebellion in China, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, as well as France in the First World War. He won his two Medals of Honor for actions at Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914 and at Fort Rivière, Haiti, in 1915.

Between 1924 and 1925 he served on detached duty as director of public safety in Philadelphia, leading a vigorous and unpopular campaign against speakeasies during Prohibition. He retired from the Marine Corps in 1931 as a major general.

In retirement he became one of the most outspoken critics of American foreign policy. His 1933 testimony to Congress on what he called the Business Plot, in which he said he had been approached to lead a fascist coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, remains historically disputed. His 1935 booklet War Is a Racket argued that American interventions abroad had served corporate interests rather than national defence and is still widely cited. He died of cancer in Philadelphia in 1940.

Smedley is an English place-name surname from Old English meaning smooth meadow, used as a masculine given name; he carried the masculine form.