And you have the little guy doing the grunt work, dying in mud, being paid $40 a week, while the barons do the billionaire thing. That's where Smedley Butler was coming from.
Bot, you assume that a victory was possible in Vietnam. That was not Korea where the south wanted to be apart from the nutjob in the north. In Vietnam, we'd have needed a larger force than was left in Korea to maintain any sort of post-victory peace and I doubt it would have lasted. In more conventional wars, the aggressor is thrown off, pretty French girls plant kisses on soldiers who bask in the glory, and stability proceeds as the natural state of things.
Butler:
Quote:
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.
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