General Smedley D. Butler is one of the USA’s highest decorated marines. After retiring from the marines he wrote this short book:
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 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.
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.
General Smedley D. Butler is one of the USA’s highest decorated marines.
He was indeed. He died in 1940 just before WW2 started (for the US). I wonder what appendices he would add to his essay based on that war, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all subsequent ones.
Many of Butler’s sentiments, if not precise substance, were echoed a couple decades later by President Eisenhower in his televised Farewell Address, which still has staying power some 60 years on:
…this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Appears the pentagon has a China conflict penciled in fir 2027. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/16/pentagon-funded-thin… NBC’s Meet the Press just aired an absolutely freakish segment in which the influential narrative management firm Center for a New American Security (CNAS) ran war games simulating a direct US hot war with China.
CNAS is funded by the Pentagon and by military-industrial complex corporations Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, as well as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes is the de facto Taiwanese embassy in the US.
The war game simulates a conflict over Taiwan which we are informed is set in the year 2027, in which China launches strikes on the US military in order to open the way to an invasion of the island.
It also happens that CNAS CEO Richard Fontaine has been featured all over the mass media pushing empire narratives about Russia and China, telling Bloomberg* just the other day that the war in Ukraine could serve the empire’s long-term interests against China.
Center for a New American Security was the former home of Ely Ratner. Mr Ratner now is Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs in the present administration.
It is no longer the Military-Industrial complex but is the Military-Industrial-Political-Media complex.
Ask General Smedley D. Butler how he would go about suspending the economy in time of war. In time of war everything should be free! Great idea! Even beyond Karl Marx’s wildest dreams!