War Is A Racket
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, winner of 2 Congessional Medals of Honor
Click Photo for Biography.
As usual, this is not going to be a history lesson about General Butler, if that's your thing, you can follow the link from the photo above.
I'm going to quote quite a bit here from General Butlers work "War Is A Racket" because it's just as relevant today as it was in 1935 when he wrote it.
If you'd like to argue his points, please have your credentials ready, this man won the Congressional Medal of Honor-TWICE.
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.
So far, all of this could have been written yesterday.
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.
OK, so substitute "War on Terror" for "World War I" and again, it could have been written yesterday.
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?
The correct answer, ladies and gentlemen is still, ZERO.
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.
Does this sound at all familiar?
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.
OK, here the names and the places may shift around a little bit, but it's still the same profiteers lurking in the shadows that benefit from wars. The same people pushing and prodding politicians and making desperate pleas to "Save those people".
"Those people" always seem to be the ones who suffer.
General Butler goes on to say:
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
So far, I haven't noticed the Freedom, Safety or Democracy we were all told this War on Terror would produce.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.
Update this statement and substitute "illicit drugs" for "bootlegging" and it's like he was some kind of Nostradamus.
Click here to continue reading War Is A Racket.
It isn't long before he gets to talking about the Bankers and their profits.
General Butler also went on to support the American Veterans of WWI also known as the Bonus Army.
The Government has a long track record of screwing over it's veterans.
How much of this is taught in today's schools?
Maybe someday we can raise a generation that doesn't have to pay the price for these old-style millionaires?
I have learned more about history since leaving school, which begs the question, what exactly did I learn in school? Having two boys in Marine Corps bootcamp right now and seeing the news, it's all I can do not to live in fear for what sacrifices they may have to make. War has always been a profitable endeavor and history is written by the winners. And we, the people... Well, I don't know about you all, but I want to live in peace without feeling like the government's got their hand in my pocketbook.
Or around my throat.
I first heard about General Butler less than a year ago, and I appreciate the reminder. All I know is that the older I get, the more antiwar I get.
I have moved well past the point of thinking "war is such a waste" anymore. No, it's a system of control - because we let it be.
Your viewpoint can also change when you have a child that could end up fighting to round out someones investment portfolio.
Best patriot America produced. He turned down Prescott Bush who tried to recruit him for a planned Nazi coup of the United States.
My understanding is that all records of those hearings were "accidentally" destroyed in a fire.
Everything important is always accidentally destroyed smh....
Great article!
Thanks
I did a post called The Man That Saved America about Gen Butler a long time ago. It was my first $25.00 post. Amazing that this was actually news to people... most of the comments were from people that never heard of him.
And I bet there are still a bunch of people who don't know about him.
It is nice to see more people waking up to this! been sharing for years, and lately the responses have started to change! It is like suddenly I am not insane! or just a nut! more and more the truth is coming out!
thank you for being part of the voice of reason!
namaste!
It's hard for a country to spend 15 years at war without something changing.
As a Marine, I have always looked up to this man and have come to admire him even more as I have researched all that was never taught to us in school. We need more Patriots like him to stand up, or this country will be lost in a generation.
He was a good man who recognized that the true cost of war was paid by the ordinary people.
Wow, this is some eye opening stuff. It's also part of the reason I would never want to be a soldier. Deep down I would know I was fighting for the gain of a few.
Sadly most people never realize that. Scumbags know that you can motivate people to do things no rational person would do if you can convince them it's for a good greater than themselves.
I liked your post on sodium, resteemed & following.
Hello, friend @theblindsquirl,
I "discovered" you today via @merej99's challenge posts.
The only thing I don't "get" about this fine article is why you've declined payout. You have performed a valuable service by bringing General Butler's writing both to new readers and as a reminder to those of us already familiar with him.
Thank you for doing so, and Steem on!
😄😇😄
![@creatr](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWvzuqZ51DoiSjXXf8bukb7JeeVV1eAJJhGBkDiYc8ajj/creatr_ap.gif)
Thanks @creatr.
I didn't feel right accepting payout when I looked at the chart showing that 22 American veterans commit suicide every day.
I think there are people out there, some of them non-profits, that are taking advantage of people's empathy for veterans in order to line their pockets.
I don't want to be one of those kind of people.
Understood and appreciated. The whole racket is a crying shame.
Nice to "meet" you today. Steem on!
Great post, I'd heard about this man in the past but never did get around to researching further. I simply added him to the list of war weary who upon speaking out against war was eventually drowned out by the industrial human mind control complex...or as I am want to refer to as mindscaping.
You've inspired me toward a post of some who also had the courage to at least speak out about how we were/are, all of us, being led down the garden path by those who would have us squander out lives in the continuous pursuit of one form of instant gratification to the next.
OK, not all of us, many are aware. Still few have any concrete ideas as to how to remedy the situation. Thank you again, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to re-position this man in my mind's eye.
Thanks @cryptologyx. Smedley Butler had an even more interesting life than that post describes.
He came forward at one point and testified before Congress that there was, for lack of a better word a "cabal" of industrialists who approached him to be a figurehead with the intent of overthrowing the Roosevelt government.
From what I understand, most of the records of those proceedings were lost in a fire.
Of course it happened...the fire I mean. Just like the jet that skimmed the ground and crashed into the Pentagon building at just the sweet spot to destroy any chance of following a trail to where 1 trillion dollars went.
Nothing is changing except they're getting less worried about being found out in their lies. Too big to jail.