Unsung heroes who start our wars
Monday, 25 May 2009 00:00

Ninjalistics honors the secret achievements of history's ninjas

Hoover DamEach Memorial Day, Ninjalistics offices across America light a stick of black incense (or, in deference to local fire codes, start a Black Incense Screensaver) in remembrance of the unsung operatives who provoke conflicts in selfless service to finance and industry. Here we recall some often overlooked incidents.

1793-97:
When George Washington's administration tries to pay off the national debt by taxing whiskey, frontier farmers harrasses tax collectors. The administration secretly hire ninja operatives to provoke the Whiskey Rebellion, permitting Washington to declare martial law in Pennsylvania and send in the militia to round up troublemakers.
1804-05:
After the young republic tires of paying tribute to Barbary pirates on the North African coast, Thomas Jefferson sends a group of frigates against the Pasha of Tripoli. In the First Barbary War, the Pasha hires ninja operatives to subvert and capture the USS Philadelphia. After the Pasha unwisely refuses to pay his operatives, they begin aiding the Americans, helping Lieutenant Stephen Decatur board the Philadelphia by night and set it afire. Operatives later guide US Marines and mercenaries to "the shores of Tripoli" to decisively capture the city of Derne.
1846:
In disputed territory on the Texas frontier, an anonymous operative posing as a local Mexican guide leads a company of dragoons commanded by US Army Captain Seth Thornton into a skirmish with 2,000 Mexican soldiers. The Thornton Affair gives US President James K. Polk a pretext to initiate the Mexican-American War (1846-48), which brings half a million square miles of the Southwest under American influence. Political operatives in Washington also defuse the Spot Resolutions, a failed attempt to obstruct the war by an upstart Whig Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.
1847:
Hired by American agriculturalists in the Pacific Northwest, operatives posing as frontier traders sell measles-infected blankets to the Native American Cayuse tribe. When the stricken tribe conducts the Whitman Massacre, operatives guide hundreds of concerned volunteers to initiate the Cayuse War. This profitable operation secures productive and scenic tribal land from primitive people who were doing nothing important.
1863:
A group of New York City Democrats known as the Copperheads, opposed to the Civil War, hire operatives to provoke citizen resentment. Competing operatives, hired by Confederate spies, further provoke the provocations, which quickly grow into the New York Draft Riots.
1899:
To kick off the Philippine-American War, ninja operatives pose as native skirmishers, giving the American army plausible grounds to move in. The US brings peace and (arguably) prosperity to the islands after removing 1.4 million unwanted and annoying Filipinos.
1899-1934:
In the Banana Wars, operatives employed by the United Fruit Company encourage Central American, Caribbean, and Pacific governments to commit mistakes requiring forceful redress. Today, whenever you eat a banana, thank a ninja!
1932:
Operatives infiltrate the ranks of the Bonus Army, 43,000 unemployed veterans and their families who march on Washington to demand redress of grievances. Aided by ninja intelligence, the US Army, led by General Douglas McArthur and Major George Patton, successfully drives off the marchers with tanks and cavalry, heroically wounding hundreds of unarmed veterans.

(Note: Numerous later incidents remain confidential under continuing nondisclosure agreements.)

These are the unrecognized builders who laid the buried foundations of our Gross Domestic Product. They lived in deep cover and often died in abrupt violence, asking for no recognition -- no glory -- nothing save a lucrative short-term contract. Yet though we spare a wistful thought for their anonymous sacrifice, we can reflect with pride these operatives at least did not wind up like American veterans, of whom one in four are homeless. The ninja faces, if not a happier nor more glorious, at least a quicker and less wretched fate.

[Photo of Hoover Dam (burial site of many unsung ninjas, usually after death) by Flickr user chalkie colour circles, released under a Creative Commons license.]


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