War Is A Racket - old classic but still very relevant

[Shigawire]

WAR IS A RACKET
By Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient:
Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC (Retired)


Battles/wars:
Boxer Rebellion
Occupation of Veracruz (1914)
Occupation of Haiti

Awards
Medal of Honor (2)
Army Distinguished Service Medal
Navy Distinguished Service Medal
French Order of the Black Star


Chapter One
War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?


Read the entire book here:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/ar...risaracket.htm

[Balikedes]

Concerning this subject in a similar way; I watched a documentary called "Why We Fight" by Eugene Jarecki this weekend. It was pretty good...
It basically states from WW2 on the US remained in a militarised state and currently employs private US contractors for everything from dishing out food to intelligence gathering.

[Lunar4]

Yeah I saw that awhile ago in my U.S. History class. Great film

[Shigawire]

Yes, I've seen that. It's very interesting.

[RZZZA]

....Franklin Roosevelt said during World War II "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster". Harry S. Truman refered to war profiteering as "treason".

Where are men of this ilk now?

edit: Y'know, it comes to my attention frequently that we are not accusing our countrymen of treason nearly as much as we should be anymore.

[Shigawire]

Well, study the history of Brown Brothers Harriman bank's dealings with Nazi Germany (via Thyssen and other industrialists), you shouldn't be surprised at some of the names that tend to pop up there.