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?

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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?