History tends to remember well the Punitive Expedition because of the inimitable character of Pancho Villa and his revolutionary bandits. Yet, as we have seen, the expedition was an atypical dirty war in that it was a limited expedition rather than a broader pacification or counterinsurgency operation. This is not to say, though, that the United States did not deal with more “orthodox” dirty wars during this era. In fact, the so-called Banana Wars of the 1910s and 1920s in nations such as Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua were quintessential dirty wars of the American imperial variety.

Here were all the trappings of America’s involvement in irregular conflict throughout its history: occupation and nation-building, jungles and mountains, elusive and sometimes charismatic rebels, atrocities, and bitter controversy back in the United States. The imperial Banana Wars of the early twentieth century were also some of America’s first experiences with nation-building defined as establishing government ministries and holding elections, however imperfect or ephemeral these “indigenous” institutions often proved. In later decades, Vietnam and El Salvador and, subsequently, Iraq and Afghanistan would become the germane examples, but before these more recent efforts, the massive undertakings in the United States’ own hemisphere involved many of the same strategies and obstacles of guerrilla and counterinsurgency warfare that the U.S. military is still learning to deal with today.