| Article from Guerrilla News Network War is Just a Racket Smedley Butler was 16 when he joined the Marine Corps. The year was 1898 and the Spanish American War had just broken out. At 17, he was leading a company into batlle in the jungles of the Philippines. The next year he was fighting in China in the Boxer Rebellion, where he earned the Brevette Medal. He fought in Puerto Rico, Panama, and Honduras. In World War I he was promoted to Major General. Smedley Butler fought for his country for 34 years. Yet despite his undying loyalty to the flag and the Corps, he was an outspoken critic of American foreign policy. Butler was nearly court-martialed for calling Mussolini a fascist while the U.S. was still happily doing business with the diminutive dictator. In Butler's most famous speech, delivered in 1933 on the subject of American intervention, he summed up what he had learned as an American fighting man. His words (excerpted below) ring even more true today. War is just a racket. 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 masses. . . . There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, 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 benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. |
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