One of the most decorated U.S. soldiers was Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940). As Wikipedia again informs us, Butler was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps (the highest rank authorized at that time), an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I.
By
the end of his career, he had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of
19 men to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the
Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only marine to be
awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate
actions.
In
June, 1932, after he retired from military service, he spoke to the Bonus Army
veterans camped out in Washington, D.C., who were demanding, at the height of
the Great Depression, the bonuses they had been promised decades after their
service (not until 1945), many in World War I.
These veterans were denied their benefits when they most needed them, so
Butler spoke to them, urging them to stand up for their rights and benefits
while not resorting to violence. Days
later, army
cavalry units led by General Douglas Macarthur and his chief military aide, Dwight Eisenhower, dispersed
the Bonus Army by riding through it, using tanks and tear gas. Several veterans were killed or
injured.
In
1935, Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC (retired), wrote a small book based
on all his experiences in and with the military, War
Is A Racket. Here is what he
wrote about the profits and costs of war:
Who
provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and
1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their
profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86
to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a 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.
But
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. On a tour
of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have
visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about
50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago.
The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee, where
there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is
three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys
with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories
and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made
over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day.
They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were
entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think
nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
Then,
suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face"! This
time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans
officers' aid and advice, and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them
any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty
Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are
eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about
face" alone.
Here
is what Butler finally concluded, in 1933, in a statement about his military
service:
"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. 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."
Based
on his writings, Butler would be appalled at what the U.S. military has been
used for by the Plundering Class that runs the United States, since 1945,
especially the illegal wars of aggression (choice) the U.S. has waged, all
without the Constitutionally-required declaration of war by Congress, against
nations that never threatened the existence of the United States: Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, and soon, Syria and Iran.
These
illegal wars have been costly in the hundreds of thousands of lives ruined of
U.S. and NATO soldiers as well as the millions of people victimized by the greed
and arrogance of the U.S. Empire, and costly in monetary terms, causing the
huge, trillion-dollar budget deficits now driving pundits and
neoliberal/imperialist "economists" to fits of hysteria, though they will never
admit that our aggressive wars of choice are a prime cause of U.S. deficits and
debt.
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