General Butler's WAR IS A RACKET

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket   (go to this link for Wikipedia's in-line hyperlinks & more).   ~snips:


War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, in which Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests have commercially benefited from warfare.

It contains this key summary:

"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 the 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 another often cited quote from the book Butler says:

"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. Looking back on it, I might 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." *

See also:

Arms industry

Military-industrial complex

Perpetual war

Free online text:  http://www.warisaracket.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
 
Curiously, I came to these things after reading overwraught scorn against overwraught allegations at:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/05/26/smedley-butler-rides-again/  huh!
 
*p.s. By way of folk of these sort, the PBS documentary on last night, The Legend of Pancho Barnes, suggested that Barnes and other 'Powderpuff Derby aviatrixes' believed they may have sabotaged by oilman Erle Halliburton.
http://panchobarnesfilm.com/film/index.php ; more cool stuff at:
http://panchobarnesfilm.com/film/links.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Halliburton