Found this interesting tidbit while surfing

[Occhidiangela]

Is it at all interesting that this same man, despite the most modern army of its day and carte-blance, failed to capture another "terrorist," Francisco "Pancho" Villa, eventually giving up the search and returning home empty-handed?

I think it is.

-Jester

Not hardly the most modern army of its day: that would be the Prussians/Germans of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1916.

The US Army of 1916 was a small professional force yet to be fleshed out into the war time Army that went across the pond a year later. (Note: George S. Patton won some fame for his actions in the Villa Expedition) Villa had an entire population to melt into along the US-Mexican border, which was a notionally Western form of government / culture (albeit in disarray due to the revolutions in series Mexican politics of the day). With three generations of US/Mexican rustling and skullduggery and border wars to rely on for indigenous support, and imbedded interests among an organized social order, the scenarios are hardly comparable.

Wilson's mandate to Pershing was not absolute, given his own political constraints. The punitive expedition sent to curb Villa's cross border raids (and the rather small forces involved) were beset by the usual problems of logistics and movement in pre-mechanized warfare. The operation was hardly of the scope and scale, in time or space, as the colonial style occupation and governance of the Philippines.

The attempt to compare apples and pears misses the mark due to lack of factual context.

Occhi