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#1
05-15-2005, 01:41 PM
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Maj. General Smedley Butler, USMC
Not your average hippie radical...
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881–June 21, 1940), nicknamed "the fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and at the time of his death the most decorated marine in U.S. history. Butler was twice the recipient of the Medal of Honor, one of only 19 to be so honored; he is noted for his outspoken left-wing views and his book War is a Racket, one of the first works describing the military-industrial complex. An immensely popular figure in the United States at the time, Butler led the Bonus Army and came forward to the U.S. Congress in 1933 to reveal a Business Plot by wealthy industrialists to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Butler was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The Quaker son of Senator Thomas S. Butler. He attended Haverford College and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1898. He fought in the Philippine-American War later that year. In 1900 he received a brevet promotion to Captain for his action during the Boxer Rebellion (which brevet promotion qualified him to receive the Marine Corps Brevet Medal in 1921). Then in 1903, he fought to protect the U.S. Consulate in Honduras from rebels. More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler Smedley Butler on Interventionism -- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. 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. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. 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. His book can be read at: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K Last edited by cmac2012; 06-11-2005 at 07:10 PM. 
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#3
05-15-2005, 10:17 PM
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So do I,though it will not sit well with my Mother,who had a Great uncle named George Dewey.
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#4
05-16-2005, 03:46 AM
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I would guess that the chances of his being a genuinely good and decent man are about 99.9%. Like Gen. Butler said, he was following orders. The skulduggery is done higher up.
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K
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#5
05-16-2005, 03:51 AM
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This is a tough one for me. I’m sure the guys who have decided that I’m an “America kicker” or America hater” will see this as more proof, if they bother to read it. No worries – I’ve been silent long enough and not looking to win any popularity contests. Many of the great philosophers hold as a crucial maxim some variation of “Know Thyself,” (Socrates, I think). Sun Tzu, in his “Art of War,” speaks of the importance of knowing oneself and knowing the enemy in battle. The bible tells us to be “sure that your sin will find you out;” Numbers 32:23. We are a great and good people in many ways. On the other hand, no one respects some blowhard lout who brags about what a fine fellow he is while his wife regularly sports black eyes and his kids are hungry and in rags. My point being that we have all sorts of debris hidden under the rug that is rarely acknowledged. Instead we laud our wonderfulness right and left while routinely denouncing the sins and faults of other nations. We hear regularly about the brutal subjugation of Eastern Europe by Russia or of Mao’s and Stalin’s purges. These things were reprehensible but we have done similar deeds on a smaller scale, generally because the nations they were done in were smaller. Even George Will and Pat Buchanan reference our slaughter of around 200,000 Filipinos between 1898 and 1902, over some absolutely necessary colonial adventure. http://b-books.blogspot.com/ We heard plenty about Daniel Ortega, “The dictator in designer glasses,” as called by Reagan because an admirer had bought Ortega around $8,000 worth of high quality prescription glasses. We hear very little of Arnoldo Aleman, aka The Fat Man (300 lbs and short), president of Nicaragua from ’97 to ’01, during which time he managed to loot approximately $100 million from his country, the second poorest in the hemisphere after Haiti. The same percentage of GDP in the U.S. would be $144 billion (!?). Aleman was part of the crowd promoted to power by Geo. Schultz and co. after the brave and noble contras put and end to the communist scourge there. More on Aleman at: http://www.theassassinatedpress.com/sellout.htm Phil Roetinger was one of the main CIA operatives in Guatemala in 1954 when we overthrew the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz, ostensibly for communist leanings but more likely because the was a threat to the United Fruit holdings of the Dulles brothers – high mucky mucks in the Eisenhower admin. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak and talk with him in Seattle in ’88. He regularly spoke out and wrote about what he believed was a debacle visited on that country by our ill-advised meddling. He was fluent in Spanish and had traveled extensively in Latin America and was appalled at the Nicaraguan adventure. Who ever hears about Phil Roetinger? The history of our plunder of Nicaragua is a long one, about 150 years worth. We cannot be a truly great and enduring nation until we come clean about our past and current crimes and abuses and take steps to avoid such piracy in the future. Doing so will be a great act of “loving America,” IMHO.
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K Last edited by cmac2012; 05-16-2005 at 04:30 AM. Reason: Errors, grievous errors
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#6
05-16-2005, 07:57 AM
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It takes two, civilian and military, to accomplish massive misuse. It has happened since before we were a nation and has happened ever since. Recall Ike's "Military-industrial complex" speech. Not trying to excuse it, but it is endemic in any bureaucracy in which large amounts of money are involved. When it's a killing machine it is both dispicable and dangerous. One of the many benefits of changing who leads the gov every 4-8 years or so is that the new broom sweeps a bit cleaner. One of the downsides of the cozy 2-party system we have is that they keep recycling the same damn brooms.
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#7
05-16-2005, 08:06 AM
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I don't disagree with him on the point that war is a financial racquet, but 10 years after his speech the military that he called a racquet stopped Hitler amongst other things.
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#8
05-16-2005, 08:10 AM
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and to say that war is based on greed is the equivlent of saying that The Dead went on tour for the sole purpose of giving drug dealers a large venue to make money.
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#9
05-16-2005, 08:12 AM
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. . . Nice!
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#10
05-16-2005, 08:30 AM
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Just because you found an interesting leftie with ties to the military from SEVENTY years ago doesn't make any of your points more valid. Find me a quote from this man after Pearl Harbor. I bet he was singing a different tune.
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Pxland 2001 Honda Accord 1995 Jeep Cherokee 1973 MB 280SEL 4.5
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#11
05-16-2005, 01:43 PM
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WW2 was a different ball of wax all right, and I'm sure you don't want to hear me brag about my Dad's heroism there again. Full time pacifism is lunacy. Every one of us has untold thousands of ancestors, who, if they hadn't jumped up and repelled some invader, would not have survived to be our ancestors. I think Butler's time and the actions he was called on to carry out were less noble and he spoke to that. On a similar note, I hear that the average CEO of a military supplying industry today makes 20 times the salary of a U.S. General with 20 years service. Good men are getting chewed up in Iraq and to help cover for Bush's tax cuts, frequently to people whose overseas businesses are safeguarded by our troops, their VA benefits are being cut. I've built or remodeled about 10 houses in the 10,000 + sq. ft. range and some of the people are sweet and some are full time *********s (it's weird... a barely reconstructed hippie like me on a first name basis with billionaires). I've seen up close the opulence and splendor of this crowd. Do they deserve it? Maybe. But some national guardsman who's losing his house and business because of a lonnngg call-up deserves something better than he's getting.
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K Last edited by cmac2012; 05-16-2005 at 02:41 PM.
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#12
05-16-2005, 01:51 PM
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__________________
[http://languageandgrammar.com/2008/01/14/youve-got-problems-not-issues/ ] "A liberal is someone who feels they owe a great debt to their fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money."
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#13
05-16-2005, 01:56 PM
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I'm sure you're right that Butler would have felt differently in '41 but he died in '40. His remarks were brought out into the open (in my life anyway) during the controversy over Nicaragua and the Contras. IMO, our behavior in Latin America has not changed that much. And (this is no slam on you) nobody consulted me on how the "left" and "right" designations would be applied. It's subtle: "Right" equals goodness, rightness, integrity. "Left" has a more negative connotation in various ways. I'm guessing it was someone like Hearst who coined and popularized that terminology. I think Butler was a man who deeply understood the sacrifices of the common soldier and spoke out on the mis-use of them. Calling him a "leftie" is just too easy of a dismissal. He was the most decorated marine in history at the time of his death.
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K
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#14
05-16-2005, 02:03 PM
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 )
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K
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#15
05-17-2005, 08:13 AM
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Does that make him redundant?
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Pxland 2001 Honda Accord 1995 Jeep Cherokee 1973 MB 280SEL 4.5
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