May 29, 2011
Courtesy Of "Policy On Point"
“In…World War [1] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their income tax returns no one knows.”
“How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried the bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded and killed in battle?”
As you tear through the 70 or so pages of Butler’s WAR IS A RACKET you will be forced to constantly remind yourself this was written in 1935 and not yesterday. This short work should be required reading in every single educational institution in the country, unfortunately it experienced over a 60 year drought in publication. The Butler family re-published the work in 2003, offering us a window into the anti-war mind of one of America’s most decorated warriors. Butler “spent 33 years in the Marines, most of [his] time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, [he] was a racketeer for Capitalism.” By the time of his death in 1940 he was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, a recipient of 16 medals (2 of which were Medals of Honor [that's a fairly select group]), and the only person to receive 2 Medals of Honor along with the Marine Corps Brevet Medal. He served his country in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Banana Wars, the Mexican Revolution, and in the trenches on the Western Front.
Although a lauded warrior, Butler had a gentle streak and a fiercely sharp mind. Throughout his military career he “had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until [he] retired to civil life did [he] fully realize it” (maybe a self-serving guilt-minimizer although I hope not). With Europe obviously about to go up in flames again, he decided he had to “face it and speak out.” If only this guy was immortal, we might not be as screwed as we are today.
WAR IS A RACKET consists of 5 chapters, an essay entitled “Common Sense Neutrality,” and a proposal for an “Amendment for Peace” to the Constitution. Oh yeah, and an introduction outlining his foiling of a Fascist putsch aimed at overthrowing FDR’s regime. But since this is already going to be a long post, only the 5 chapters will be covered here. So go buy the book!
The sarcastic and matter-of-fact style with which he writes grips you and forces you to realize there is no other truthfully virtuous position on modern violent conflict except for his. He lays out the argument so clearly the reader would be basically admitting his or her own vileness or stupidity by not agreeing with him. These are the kind of arguments we need now, ones no one can argue against. Thankfully, his points are timeless.
WAR IS A RACKET!
“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 international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
As the “mad dogs of Europe” lined up against each other once again, Butler saw what was coming as any well-informed rational observer would. At the time there were 40,000,000 men under arms, and the “statesmen and diplomats [had] the temerity to say that war [was] not in the making …. Hell’s bells! [Were] these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?”
Of course Butler was too smart to believe the peaceful rhetoric. He was intimately aware of the intentions of Hitler and Mussolini, the latter he quoted to prove his point. Il Duce, in “International Conciliation,” the publication for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace stated:
“And, above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes [not] in the possibility for the utility of perpetual peace…War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it.”
Wow, really showing your hand there Mussolini. I love how he is basically speaking in the first person, “Fascism” being the royal “we” V2.0. I wonder how many times he “shouldered a rifle” in WW2.
Butler’s first reference to the corporate interest in warfare hearkens back to the 1904 Russo-Japanese War in which “we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan.” Surely the Russians were doing something horribly immoral to cause such a policy shift in the United States. “Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan,” so suck it Russia. At the time of writing, he realized the current goal of the propagandists was to “poison us against the Japanese.” Surely some dark and devious actions on the part of the Japanese served as the catalyst for this policy shift. Or could it be that our “open door” policy with China garnered $90,000,000 per year in trade? Or maybe this virulent anti-Japanese sentiment sources from the fact that we had “spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in [the prior] 35 years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) [had] … private investments of less than $200,000,000″ in the islands.
So to save this investment “we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.” But not to worry, there is an upside to all of this. “Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat Packers. Speculators. They would fare well.” His talent for understatement is unmatched.
Butler smartly points out that as of 1898 (when all of our territory was confined to the mainland) our national debt was about $1bn, but as a result of “shunt[ing] aside…the advice of the Father of our Country,” by 1918 this figure had exploded to over $25bn due to our “fiddling in international affairs.”
And “[w]hat does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit the men who are maimed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and sweethearts? What does it profit their children?”
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
“The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten and sometimes even twelve per cent. But wartime profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred percent – the sky is the limit. All that the traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.”
Butler addresses one aspect of wartime profiteering that strikes very close to home given our current international “fiddling.” Of course the companies experiencing such explosions in their bank accounts wouldn’t dress their interests in terms of profit margins. Instead they were “dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and ‘we must all put our shoulder to the wheel,’ but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.” Ringing any bells?
I’ll just list some of the figures he cites to give you an idea of the massive corporate interest in perpetuating international conflict.
“Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people.”
- Du Pont: Pre-war average profits of $6mn/year. Wartime profits of $58mn/year.
- Bethlehem Steel: Pre-war profits averaged $6mn/year. Wartime=$49mn/year.
- US Steel: Pre-war=$105mn/year. Wartime=$240mn/year.
- Anaconda Copper: Pre-war=$10mn/year. Wartime=$34mn/year.
- Utah Copper: Pre-war=$5mn/year. Wartime=$21mn/year.
“Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren’t the only ones. There are still others. Let’s take leather.”
- Central Leather: Pre-war=$1.167mn/year. Wartime=$15.5mn/year (1100% spike, “that’s all”).
- General Chemical: Pre-war=$.8mn/year. Wartime=$12mn/year (1400% spike).
- International Nickel: Pre-war=$4mn/year. Wartime=$73.5mn/year (1700% spike).
- American Sugar Refining: Pre-war=$.2mn/year. Wartime=$6mn/year (you do the math).
Butler cites Senate Document 259 which analyzed “the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance, the coal companies made between 100 and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.”
35mn hobnailed shoes were sold to the government to supply the 4mn soldiers sent to finish ‘the war to end all wars.’ Unfortunately no soldier under the command of Butler had more than one pair. Luckily for the “leather people” there was still a surplus of cowhide, and they were able to convince Uncle Sam to purchase hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles. “But there wasn’t any American cavalry overseas!”
The USG was also convinced to buy 20mn mosquito nets for use in the trenches on the Western Front. Not one arrived in France. Just in case any of our boys ran out of netting (obviously the company cared so greatly for them) they decided to convince Uncle Same to purchase another 40mn yards of the netting. Oh yeah, there are no mosquitos in France …. Here you get a great taste of Butler’s sense of humor. “[I]f the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitos to plant in France so that more netting would be in order.”
$1bn was spent on aircraft and engines that never actually flew.
The clothing manufacturers also plundered a nice profit. For instance, 14 cent undershirts were sold to our government for 30-40 cents each. Not as bad as the Halliburton green beans or toilet seats, but still…
4mn rucksacks and all the fillers “crammed warehouses” stateside post-war. Unfortunately regulations were changed and they all had to be scrapped, however ” the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.”
This one is just classic. A “very versatile patriot” convinced the USG to purchase 144 48-inch wrenches. The punch line is that the only nut in the world at the time to which these wrenches could be applied was the one holding the Niagara Falls turbines. “Oh, they were very nice wrenches.” After the armistice was signed, the manufacturer was sorely disappointed as they were on track to drum up some nuts to fit the wrenches already produced.
And just in case you have trouble forgetting which war we are talking about (if the saddles didn’t keep you in the zone) apparently someone had the bright idea that all colonels should ride on buckboards. BUCKBOARDS! 6,000 were sold to the USG, none used.
Shipbuilders produced over $3bn in ships, unfortunately $635mn worth “were made of wood and wouldn’t float!” I wish he had given more detail on this one (maybe someone else can do my research for me), what the hell could they have looked like? I imagine some Francis Drake fleet squaring off against a dreadnought.
$52bn (by the estimates of contemporary economists) was ‘wasted’ on WW1. Of this expenditure, $16bn was forwarded to companies in the form of profits. “That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way.”
As a closer to chapter 2 Butler refers to a Senate committee probe that was aimed at developing a mechanism to “[limit] profits in war time.” While this might be a blow to the warmongering suppliers, it certainly didn’t do anything to improve the plight of the young men about to be slaughtered in WW2.
“Apparently…the plan [didn't] call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as [he had] been able to ascertain there [was] nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three….Of course, the committee [couldn't] be bothered with such trifling matters.”
Who Pays the Bills?
“We all pay them – in taxes.”
Although every citizen sponsors state violence through taxes, the bankers got their due through the whole Liberty Bond scam. People would buy bonds at $100 to support the war effort, being the good Americans that they are, then the banks would depress the market to the point where people would panic and sell them back to the banks for $84-$86. Pretty penny when stretched over millions of people.
But above all, Butler rightly points out, it is the soldiers who pay the highest cost. Damn right, I get pissed off at taxes don’t worry, and I get pissed off that it costs $1mn/year in said taxes to keep one soldier in Afghanistan (a person that otherwise might actually be PRODUCING wealth god-forbid) and that as long as I continue to pay into government coffers I am complicit in the mass murder of civilians around the world. But I bet the soldiers are certainly more pissed off when they lose a leg or a buddy.
It is interesting to see Butler describe what have by now become known as the ‘conditioning’ techniques of the modern soldier, which he refers to as “mass psychology.” We would take boys with a “normal viewpoint” and make them “about face; to regard murder as the order of the day.” We poisoned their souls against their fellow man, told them they were fighting for God and democracy (sound familiar?), that theirs would be a “glorious adventure.” As the cream of our country were sent to die on the Western Front, “[n]o one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents.”
It is equally interesting to read Butler addressing the lack of re-conditioning techniques applicable to returning soldiers, something our military never quite addressed until after Vietnam, and which still plagues the armed services today with their budgets so stretched or eviscerated they cannot provide adequate re-immersion counseling for our boys coming home. These “mentally destroyed” men, of which there were over 50,000 at his time of writing penned (sometimes literally) in Veterans Hospitals, were and still are made to pursue this second about face alone, to the detriment of the relevant generation.
Of course the soldiers paid the higher price in blood and guts and mental anguish. Anyone who doubts that just check out some videos of shellshocked troops or pictures from The Horror Of It. But they were also allowed to pay for the war as well! What luck! We operated on the pillage system for a long time, up until the end of the Spanish-American War booty was split up between the conquering soldiers just like it had been in eras past. Napoleon changed all that…with medals. He realized:
“All men are enamored of decorations…they positively hunger for them.”
We learned from Napoleon that all you need to do to get soldiers to die cheaply was to stick a shiny trinket on their uniform and have everyone stand up and clap for them. “Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier.” Propaganda, vicious and effective, was also used by both sides on a scale never before seen. If you didn’t want to go die for the du Ponts you should feel ashamed of yourself, especially when your high-and-mighty clergymen screams at his flock from the pulpit to “kill, kill, kill…kill the Germans.” Just as the Germans were preaching to kill, kill, kill the Allies. God can’t be on everyone’s side right?
Our soldiers were paid the “large salary” of $30/month. Half was taken to ‘support’ dependents as our virtuous USG couldn’t allow them to become burdens on the state. Another $6 was taken for “what amounted to accident insurance,” leaving him $9/month. In addition the soldiers were “virtually blackjacked into paying for [their] own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds at $100,” of which they purchased approximately $2bn worth.
“And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still praying.”
HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!
“You can’t end it with disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parlays at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.”
His solution sounds far-fetched, Utopian, utterly impossible given the entanglements between industry, military, and government under which we now live. Maybe in his day it seemed more feasible to “conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation’s manhood can be conscripted.” Although it seems impossible today, it isn’t. Sure any President who treads this path would likely be assassinated, but maybe not. His logic would immediately put a stop to all but the most threatening violent conflicts by conscripting “the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives…of all the…[industries] that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators” one month before the heart of a generation can be fleshed out and sacrificed on the battlefield altar. And let them be conscripted at $30/month. The same goes for “admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders,” let there be an equality of financial risk between the would-be profiteers and those shipped to the slaughterhouse, and the gears of war would grind to a halt. If given a 30 day period to mull it over in the plunderers’ minds, Butler maintains their would be no war at the end of the month. I tend to agree with him…
Another necessary invention to prevent unnecessary conflict would be the creation of a “limited plebiscite” comprised only “of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and the dying.” Although this sounds once again far-fetched, Butler maintains this “would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities” as they do during drafts. Those deemed fit for duty would be included in the voting ranks of the plebiscite. Only the ones risking their necks should be allowed to send themselves into the deathzone, “not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms.”
Once again Butler strikes close to home when he addresses the powerful lobbying talents of the “swivel-chair admirals of Washington …. They are smart. They don’t shout that ‘We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.’ Oh, no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power …. Then they begin to cry for a larger Navy” of course “[f]or defense purposes only.” He muses sarcastically about how surely the ships would conduct maneuvers within a reasonable distance of our shores, when in reality we basically sent these ‘defensive’ ships straight into Japanese harbors. Our current military strategies involving ‘preemptive strikes’ against run-down countries like Iraq mirror this logic perfectly. Maybe not in the appropriation of arms (we certainly had enough of those to start with), but in the basic rhetoric of using offensive military assets for offensive actions yet disguised in the language of ‘national defense.’ To nip these baiting tactics in the bud Butler recommends our navy be limited to within 200 miles of the coast. The air force to 500 miles. And the army to the “territorial limits of our nation.”
“To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our army to home defense purposes.”
TO HELL WITH WAR!
“Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had ‘kept us out of war’ and on the implied promise that he would ‘keep us out of war.’ Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.”
We must once again assume that this was because his bleeding heart went out to our European friends under the boot of the demonic Germans. Right? But once again it is obvious that we care more for British and French cash than we do about their boys getting slaughtered. By 1916 U.S. investment on the side of the Allies was in between $5&$6bn. By 1916 it was quite clear that the allies would be eventually crushed by the perpetually efficient Germans, and that that debt could never be recouped in the event of a German victory. Had the American people been asked whether or not their minds had changed so suddenly? It goes without saying. Had the 4mn boys we sent over been asked if they were willing to die for the debts of the bankers and manufacturers? It goes without saying. On a larger scale, why do the political configurations of European states need be a central concern of the United States? “Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.” Well that hasn’t worked out too well has it? I certainly know exactly no one who feels D.C. represents their personal interests. So whose interests do they represent? It goes without saying.
Butler discusses the failures of arms treaty negotiations and indicates their hopelessness as long as the envoys to such negotiations are the very ones who benefit from undermining a truly mutual disarmament. “The professional soldiers and sailors don’t want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs …. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful … are the sinister agents of those who profit by war.” The actual goals of these disarmament conferences are not mutual disarmament and therefore safety, but rather to achieve the greatest military concessions for your side while minimizing those of the would-be ‘enemy.’
Butler, having experienced the chaos of the trenches, and if not directly witnessed, then been affected by the use of the new chemical weapons, prophetically states that future “victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.” How right he was.
“If we put them to work on making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building a greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war – even the munitions makers.”
“So … I say, ‘TO HELL WITH WAR!’
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Smedley D. Butler never lived to see the ultimate depravity of Hitler’s Germany, nor did he live to witness the utter destruction wrought by the “skill and ingenuity of our scientists” and unleashed upon the Japanese. One wonders if his mind would have been changed by the prospect of seeing pictures from the death camps. One wonders whether or not the Cold War would have affected his isolationist outlook. One wonders whether after experiencing the preeminent U.S. position following WW2 would he have been drunk on it too and decided it was time to construct a global empire. If we hadn’t entered WW2, one wonders whether or not the Russians could have actually beaten them back from Stalingrad, and one wonders whether or not the Nazis might have actually completed their front-running nuclear weapons program. One wonders a lot of things….
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