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A MUST READ FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

As President Obama continues his policy deliberations on the Afghan War, attention is centered on how he will respond to the assessment from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces, which reportedly recommends sending an additional 40,000 troops to fight the resurgent Taliban. Besides the general’s report, the president is busy pouring over briefing books and weighing the opinions of cabinet officials, legislators and outside experts in search of the right strategy for what is arguably the most important decision to date of his young administration. In the interest of keeping all options on the table, Obama should add War Is a Racket, the anti-war classic by Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, to his reading list.

Butler, who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, was America’s most decorated soldier at the time of his death in 1940. Despite his antiwar views, Butler was a hero to rank-and-file military men for his bravery and support of the 1932 Bonus March on Washington by out-of-work veterans petitioning the government for stepped-up payment of their promised WWI bonus. He went on to gain national attention by testifying before a Congressional Committee investigating a conspiracy against President Franklin D. Roosevelt by right-wing business interests, described in the History Channel documentary “The Plot to Overthrow FDR.”

Written with piss-and-vinegar during the Great Depression, War Is a Racket was a work of conscience, as Butler explained: "Now that I see the international war clouds again gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out." Butler pulled no punches. The experiences that informed his tragi-comic condemnation of the profit motive behind war were summarized in the following passage from a 1935 issue of Common Sense magazine:

"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 in three
districts. I operated on three continents."

Within the pages of War Is a Racket, Butler exposes the military-industrial complex as a tool of capitalist greed. The "speeches about patriotism, love of country" notwithstanding, only a very few enjoy war's "fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people - who do not profit," Butler warned more than 70 years ago.

In the chapter Who Pays the Bills?, Butler describes how the financial sector benefits in times of crisis. "We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the banker. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us - the people - got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par - and above. Then the bankers collected their profits."

He also discusses how the state-reliant information apparatus beats the drum for military intervention. Recalling the lead-up to World War I, Butler writes: "We used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

"So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed...

"Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the 'war to end all wars.' This was the 'war to make the world safe for democracy.' No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason."

When it comes to picking up the tab for war, Butler reminds us that "the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

"If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veterans' hospitals in the United States...In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men - men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago...

"Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays it too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly - his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters."

Having first-hand experience as a racketeer in uniform, Butler knows precisely how to put an end to war. "You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parlays at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions," he says in offering up a three-step plan to "smash the war racket."

"We must take the profit out of War.

"We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

"We must limit our forces to home defense purposes."

At barely over 40 pages, War Is a Racket would be a quick read for the president. He owes it to himself, and the millions of Americans who elected him overwhelmingly to serve as their commander-in-chief, to consider the wise counsel of a true American hero (if only as a counterweight to the adroit lobbying of the swivel-chair generals in Washington) in deciding whether to continue to conduct a war that benefits the very few, at the expense of the very many.

Posted by Alias at October 14, 2009 04:03 PM