The greatest peace activist of all time, General Smedley Butler, produced the timeless little 1935 book War is a Racket. As Butler described it, “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.” …
As Butler noted, “Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. 1. We must take the profit out of war. 2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. 3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.”
The Racket Thanks you for Your Service
Worshiping Instead of Questioning
May 31 – Memorial Day
All politicians, “Left” and “Right,” will pay some kind of homage to our fallen soldiers today. They will reference their “dying so that you could be free,” or variants upon that theme. The unquestioned message will be that their sacrifices were not in vain. They were heroes, and we should thank any living military personnel for their “service.” …
The false flag of “Remember the Maine” ushered in American imperialism abroad in the Spanish-American War of 1898, as well as the future false flags we’ve all come to know so well. …
When Donald Trump caused a ruckus last year by questioning… just what these soldiers died for, he was absolutely right. The pomp and pageantry, and the flag-draped coffins, distract the masses from the sorrow they should feel, especially for their own loved ones.
A few of those who suffered the most personal loss imaginable, like my friend Cindy Sheehan, get it. …
It’s hard to have a genuine peace movement when those running this Banana Republic insist on celebrating past wars, and present military personnel, on a constant basis. Americans have fallen for the same hackneyed demonization of various foreign bogeymen and nations for well over a century now. The only war that was widely questioned at all in this country was the Vietnam War. But the hippies and future yuppies who led that counterculture movement seem generally pretty cool with the nonstop, pointless bombings and occupations of small countries for more than thirty years now. Where are the large anti-war marches protesting our years in Afghanistan? Our occupation in and embargoes against Iraq, which killed so many civilians?
I admit that I’ve never understood the military mindset. I don’t think I could ever kill somebody who wasn’t attacking my family. …
The greatest peace activist of all time, General Smedley Butler, produced the timeless little 1935 book War is a Racket. As Butler described it, “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.” Butler had a birds-eye view of World War I, and understood clearly that war was not about enemies, but opportunities for profit. It still isn’t about the “endless series of hobgoblins” H.L. Mencken mentioned as being the driving force behind modern politics.
Smedley Butler was Huey Long’s prospective Secretary of War, which he announced in the Kingfish’s posthumously published My First Days in the White House. Butler considered it the greatest honor of his life. As Butler noted, “Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. 1. We must take the profit out of war. 2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. 3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.”
Huey Long was assassinated in 1935, just after announcing his presidential candidacy. Butler died at a relatively young age, before our entrance into World War II. There have been other prominent voices for peace since then. Senator Robert Taft was a strict noninterventionist who was screwed out of the 1952 Republican presidential nomination by the same “Wall Street and the bankers” Butler wrote about. John F. Kennedy was arguably the only pro-peace president we’ve had since the early days of the Republic. We all know what happened to him.
Where are the voices for peace now? Cynthia McKinney was run out of Congress by the powerful Israeli lobby, which controls our disastrous modern foreign policy. Dennis Kucinich has left politics. Pat Buchanan never had a chance. The majority of the American public has always been more receptive to the parades featuring processions of military veterans, flag waving, and fiery speeches from politicians who never saw a battlefield, than to the most eloquent words of the Smedley Butlers. They aren’t swayed by the beauty in JFK’s American University speech, which was the greatest plea for peace ever spoken or written by a U.S. politician. …
Harry Patch, the last surviving World War I soldier, said it best when he declared, “War is organized murder and nothing else.” Why are we celebrating the criminal slaughter of so many youngsters, past and present? They died only to increase the fortunes and power of the evil people who have all but destroyed this country.
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