True, and we have been invading countries in central and south america, as well as islands in the area, for pretty nearly the entire time. That's what the book was about: All those minor, largely forgotten, actions. We learned a great deal during that time, and the Marine Corps actually wrote a book on how to conduct these small-scale operations, but the book was largely forgotten as a result of WWI and WWII. The author argued that the Vietnam War was largely a result of the US trying to apply the lessons of WWI and WWII to a situation where the earlier, then forgotten, book on small wars would have applied more readily.