Profits and Losses
"War is a Racket" by Major General D. Smedley Butler USMC was published shortly before World War II. He wrote “Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”
Butler was a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. No one of his caliber was available to counter the arguments, when Bush’s right wing policy makers claimed that the tiny oil-rich nation of Iraq posed a direct military threat to our nation.
Instead, we had Bush directing a servile Colin Powell, to present to the UN the Bush regime’s "evidence" that Iraq was an imminent nuclear threat to America. After presenting the deceitful statement to the UN, Colin Powell told an aid that the so-called evidence was “bullshit”.
Butler insisted that historically war has been the most profitable racket, and the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. He wrote that war is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Last year, Exxon Mobil made the largest corporate profit in history. At the same time, the families of those serving in Iraq were paying record prices at the pumps, the Bush regime was giving oil companies huge subsidies to help them make these record profits. Recently, Lee Raymond, the retired CEO of Exxon Mobil was given a Golden Parachute exceeding four hundred million dollars.
Seventy years ago, General Butler reminded Americans that the price for war includes newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, economic instability, depression and all its attendant miseries and backbreaking taxation for generations.
Nothing has changed, because inattentive, fearful, and gullible voters elected a pair of cowardly corporate chickenhawks.
Butler was a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. No one of his caliber was available to counter the arguments, when Bush’s right wing policy makers claimed that the tiny oil-rich nation of Iraq posed a direct military threat to our nation.
Instead, we had Bush directing a servile Colin Powell, to present to the UN the Bush regime’s "evidence" that Iraq was an imminent nuclear threat to America. After presenting the deceitful statement to the UN, Colin Powell told an aid that the so-called evidence was “bullshit”.
Butler insisted that historically war has been the most profitable racket, and the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. He wrote that war is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Last year, Exxon Mobil made the largest corporate profit in history. At the same time, the families of those serving in Iraq were paying record prices at the pumps, the Bush regime was giving oil companies huge subsidies to help them make these record profits. Recently, Lee Raymond, the retired CEO of Exxon Mobil was given a Golden Parachute exceeding four hundred million dollars.
Seventy years ago, General Butler reminded Americans that the price for war includes newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts and homes, economic instability, depression and all its attendant miseries and backbreaking taxation for generations.
Nothing has changed, because inattentive, fearful, and gullible voters elected a pair of cowardly corporate chickenhawks.
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