01 April 2011

war is a racket

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912… I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped …see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested… 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.
MAJOR GENERAL SMEDLEY BUTLER, US Marine Corps, who spoke these immortal words as one of US history’s most informed insiders because at the time of his death, Butler was one of the most highly decorated Marines having toured the entire world hoisting the banner of US commerce (via adailyriot)
This is actually a passage from Smedley Butler’s canonical critique “War Is A Racket”, required reading for anyone wishing to better understand the forces which drive the US to a state of perpetual war.

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