"War Is A Racket"
Maj. Gen Smedley Butler (1881-1940) was twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and might have won it a third time if such Medals had been given out during the Boxer Rebellion in China.
As a U.S. Marine, Butler fought for corporate interests in many theatres around the world, and was wounded many times.
In 1931 he criticized Benito Mussolini. The Italian government complained, and President Hoover forced Secretary of the Navy Adams to arrest and court-martial General Butler -- despite the generals' decorations and war record. Butler apologized to Adams, and the court martial was cancelled with only a reprimand.
In 1935, Butler published a short book titled War Is A Racket.
It is a career military man's indictment of WAR PROFITEERING.
Here are some excepts…
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I spent 33 years in military service, basically acting as an enforcer for Big Business, for Wall Street, and especially for the bankers. I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
In 1902, and again in 1912, I helped “purify” Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers. In 1903 I helped make Honduras safe for American fruit companies. In 1914, I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests. In 1915, I helped make Haiti and Cuba safe for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. In 1916, I murdered people in the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests. In 1927, I made sure that Rockefeller and Standard Oil had a free hand in China. I helped rape half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.
War has always been a racket. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, and surely the most vicious racket of all. It is the only one in which profits are reckoned in dollars, and the losses in lives.
By “racket” I mean an operation that presents one face to the public, and a different face to insiders. War, like any other racket, is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many.
In World War I, a mere handful garnered the profits, while tens of thousands of Americans died. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during World War I. At least, that’s how many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns.
None of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle, or dug a trench, or knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout. None spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets. None parried a bayonet thrusts, or took bullets, or had limbs blown off.
After a nation steals territory through war, the same few who profited from war make a profit on the new territory. The general public shoulders the bill in suffering, death, and slavery.
I had long suspected all this when I was still in the military, but I didn’t fully grasp it until I got out. Now we are preparing to go to World War II. Once again, the bankers and the elites are choosing sides. Once again they see a huge profit to be had, and are eager for war.
Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Jacob Schiff, the Rothschild agent, financed Japan. Now the bankers are poisoning us against the Japanese so the war profiteers can make another killing.
Until 1898 we didn't own any territory outside the mainland of North America. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We launched the Spanish-American War to acquire outside territory. We started to build an empire for the rich. At the end of the World War I, our national debt had increased 25 times.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. However, wartime profits are twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent. There is no limit.
Consider the du Pont Empire, which makes gunpowder and so on. The duPonts were wealthy before World War I, but afterward their wealth became truly staggering. World War I brought them an average yearly increase in profits of 950 percent.
Same with steel makers and so on. Anaconda Copper became rich beyond measure.
Of course, the biggest profiteers of all are the bankers. The big central banks are partnerships, rather than incorporated organizations. Hence they do not have to report to stockholders. Their profits are secret. No one in government has access to the bankers’ records.
During World War I, we purchased $100 “Liberty Bonds” from the bankers. After the war, the bankers depressed the price of these bonds. This frightened the public. Hence people sold their bonds back to the bankers for 84 cents on the dollar. Then, when the bankers had all the bonds, they caused the prices to go back up again. The bankers collect profits coming and going.
SOLDIERS
I am sitting in a graveyard as I write these words (1934). I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. I’ve seen about 50,000 destroyed men. Boys were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into battle. They were made to regard murder as natural and “right.” After the war, they were abruptly discharged and told that murder is “wrong” again. Many could not make the psychological adjustment. Many went mad. Many destroyed themselves.
In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 boys are in what amounts to a prison. They are in barracks with steel bars. Barbed wire covers the building, the porches, everything. These boys have been mentally destroyed. They don't even look like human beings. They couldn’t cope with the tremendous excitement of war, and then the abrupt end of war.
Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, in which soldiers got to share some of the loot they captured. When the soldiers captured an enemy vessel, the soldiers got a cut of the proceeds. For World War I, we did away with all that when we started drafting people. Instead of giving soldiers a piece of the action, we give them medals. We make the boys yearn for medals.
Few medals were given out until the Civil War, which brought the Congressional Medal of Honor. Everybody coveted that medal. Everybody enlisted. After the Civil War, no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War. Boys see those medals, and they yearn to go off to kill and die.
In World War I, average people were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army. Almost all clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. God is on our side. God wills that all Germans be killed. The German clergy said the same thing. “Mass murder pleases God.”
The boys were sent to World War I with sayings like, “This is the war to end all wars,” and, “We are making the world safe for democracy." Of course, no one mentioned war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here in the USA. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents.
The soldiers were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
During World War I, soldiers were given a salary of $30 per month – minus taxes. Indeed the income tax was passed just before the outbreak of World War I. This was all part of the plan. Taxes took 20 percent of the soldier’s 30-dollar paycheck. Half of the remaining 24 dollars was deducted by the government to (supposedly) support the soldier’s dependents, so the dependents would not become a charge upon his community. So now the soldier has 12 dollars. Of that, he was forced to pay six dollars a month for accident insurance. This was mandatory. At the end of all the deductions, the average soldier ended up with a salary of six dollars a month during the war. Most of that six dollars was used to buy Liberty Bonds, with the money going straight to the bankers. As a result, most soldiers got no money at all on paydays.
The soldiers were forced to buy a total of about $ 2 billion worth of Liberty bonds. That money went to the bankers. Then the soldiers were forced to sell those bonds back to the bankers at 84 cents on the dollar.
Meanwhile, as soldiers lay in trenches, their families worried constantly, spending many sleepless nights – all so the elite can make a profit.
When the soldier returned home minus an eye, or a leg, or with his mind broken, the suffering continued for him and his family.
The only way to stop this madness is to take the profit out of war. We must draft the elite and their assets before we draft the nation’s manhood. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation –it must draft the executives.
Let’s restrict EVERYONE in the nation to the same income that soldiers get.
Let the kings and tycoons get by on only 30 dollars a month, minus deductions. Why not? They aren't running any risks. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry.
Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over, and you will see that there will be no war.
Let young people vote on whether they should go to war. They’re the ones that have to kill and die.
Make certain that our military forces are for defense only. Let’s limit the ships of our navy to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898, the USS Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor, and would never have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain. Two hundred miles is plenty for defense purposes. We cannot start an offensive war if we limit our ships to 200 miles. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for reconnaissance. And the army should never leave our borders at all.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war.” Five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
An allied “commission” of bankers came over and told Wilson that the war in Europe was about to be lost. They said, “We owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose, then we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't. Therefore you must go to war.”
This was all done in secret. And so we went to war to preserve “democracy.” Now, in 1935, the world has less of democracy than ever.
Anyway, what business is it of ours if a foreign land has democracy or not? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.
Now in 1935 we are gearing up to have another World War. Same old excuses. Same old lies. We must go to war to "bring democracy" to foreign peoples.
No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. They are tight with the bankers and the war profiteers. Each time we go to war, the weapons become deadlier. Now we have poison gas and germ weapons.
So...I say,
TO HELL WITH WAR!
Source:
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
MUST be read by EVERYONE in America and in the world.
PROFIT and WAR must be decoupled in order for this madness to end.
The same must be done with PROFIT and SICKNESS, aka "for-profit healthcare" an oxymoron if ever there was one.
People MUST NOT allow - through their governments and institutions - PROFITS to be made by one group of people AT THE EXPENSE of another, whatever the context may be.
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"Money" has no value - people do.
Every Marine hears this speech by Smedley Butler read in Marine Corps History classes in boot camp. Marines are taught to loath prolonged political wars. Wars are to be fought and won quickly.
The Marines are now wanting to be pulled out of Iraq and redeployed in Afghanistan. That's because they see the futility of being in Iraq - a war and occupation based entirely on lies.
Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a much tougher country to fight in - extreme mountain warfare against a people who have never been conquered, at least not since Alexander. But the Marines are still under the delusion that they are fighting against the people who brought down the WTC.
If they wanted to fight the real people who brought down the WTC, they would ask to be deployed in Tel Aviv, London, Washington, and New York!