Excerpts from “War Is a Racket”:
WAR is a racket. It has always 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.
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In the World War* 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.
[* The author is referring to World War I]
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?
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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.
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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?
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Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation….But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don’t believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran’s hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago.
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That’s a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits.
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Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does.
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When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he.
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WELL, it’s a racket, all right.
A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
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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.**
I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.
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But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.
So…I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!
Was this written by some pacifist-turned Vietnam War veteran?
By some disgruntled Iraq war veteran?
By some anti-war liberal?
The selected excerpts are from a speech delivered by Smedley Darlington Butler in 1933.
OK, but who is this Butler.
Smedley Darlington Butler was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
Butler joined the Marine Corps when the Spanish American War broke out. During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honor, the first one for the capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914, and the second one for the capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti in 1917. In addition, he was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers).
According to Wikipedia, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.
I highlight the General’s military career, heroism and patriotism, because so often we tend to associate opposition to military aggression with pacifism, or even with a lack of patriotism.
I have selectively quoted specific excerpts from the General’s speech for two reasons.
First, to try to “camouflage” the references to a particular war or conflict—to avoid “dating” the speech.
Second, to highlight how some of Butler’s misgivings and concerns about the rationale for war; about some of the companies (the du Pont’s, the Bethlehem and United Steel’s, then; perhaps the Halliburton’s, KBR’s, Blackwater’s, today) that profit from war; but, more important, about the cost of war in terms of the human tragedy, ring so true today—76 years later.
The reader of the entire, lengthy speech by Butler may not agree with everything he says about when and why our nation should go to war—I don‘t— but if there is anyone who has the right to express his opinions about war and peace, no matter how controversial, it is this U.S. Marine, this American hero.
General Butler died on June 21, 1940—around the time our nation was on the brink of yet another war—after a successful post-military speaking, writing and very outspoken political activism career. A career that included running for the U.S. Senate in the Republican primary in Pennsylvania in 1932.
The general appeared on the cover of the June 20, 1927, TIME Magazine issue.
** In a “Foreword” to his speech, Butler said: “War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.”
Note: The general’s speech can be found at several web sites. Here is one
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.