An Interview with Smedley Butler

[VanishingPoi]

http://www.vfp109rcc.org/an_intervie...ley_butler.htm

An excerpt:

Q: There has been a lot of evidence of corporate profiteering on this current war, extending to the highest levels. What's you view?

General Butler: 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 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 the war a few people make huge fortunes. New millionaires and billionaires are created in a war. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war, nations acquire additional territory. They just take it. This newly acquired territory is exploited by the few – the self-same few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. 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. Truly, war is a racket.