25 ms·

War Is a Racket (1935)

383 points by pasquinelli 3y ago

EA-3167 3y ago
What do you figure he had to say after 1945?
- DDSDev 3y ago
  For anyone curious, Smedley Butler died in 1940[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
  - deeg 3y ago
    To anyone just passing through the comments, the Wiki article on Butler is a worthy read. He was an interesting person.
    - DicIfTEx 3y ago
      The YouTube series Knowing Better had a very good episode about Butler and this essay too: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Lg-nUy2DalM https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Lg-nUy2DalM
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Which was probably good for his reputation. Some people die at the right time. Had he lived a bit longer he might have come out against entry into WWII, which would not have aged well.
    - buildsjets 3y ago
      He was an Anti-Fascist, but wanted to prevent a war with the Fascists. In fact, he was so Anti-Fascist, that the US Government apologized to Benito Mussolini on his behalf, and court-martialed him over his Anti-Fascist comments about Mussolini. Source: New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/30/archives/united-states-apologizes-to-mussolini-general-butler-to-be.html https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/30/archives/united-states-ap...
      - buildsjets 3y ago
        Also, record of the apology from the Department of State. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1931v02/d663 https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1931v02/d6...
      - allemagne 3y ago
        Sounds like he won a moral victory over the US Government and the Fascists, and then the US Government (ever full of contradictions) later helped depose the actual Fascists through the war he wanted to avoid.
      - thrwwXZTYE 3y ago
        > He was an Anti-Fascist, but wanted to prevent a war with the Fascists That's rich :) For all intents and purposes you're supporting it, you just like to support it while feeling morally superior.
- TremendousJudge 3y ago
  What would you expect?
- swayvil 3y ago
  I appreciate the brevity but what exactly are you saying? That WW2 wasn't a racket? Is that your thesis here?
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I'd interpret the question as: "given the copious evidence that the US did not enter WWII intentionally to make money for industrialists, is Smedley's thesis that all war is a racket reasonable? To what extent are humanitarian or democratic concerns as important as war profits in the decision to go to war?" (with the unstated assumption that the US was just in its choice to fight the Axis) I actually don't think Smedley would have changed his message at all; I think he started from a false premise that he was 100% convinced of, and would have pointed at the enormous profits made by war industrialists in the US during WWII. He might not also notice that post-war US was the most economically productive country of all time, that it opened up huge options of African Americans, or even really recognize quite what motivated Hitler and the Nazis.
    - mythrwy 3y ago
      Maybe the US didn't enter WWII with the idea of making a profit. I don't know. But what is undeniable is the US exited WWII in a very good position and lots of profits were made.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        What does that matter though? Should we have bombed ourselves because germany and japan couldn't do it?
    - swayvil 3y ago
      So, yes. You are saying "nuh uh smedly, ww2 was a proper justified fight"
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- bell-cot 3y ago
  General Rule: If a war is existential, then countries which want to keep existing usually find ways to turn down the "racket" aspects.
- mythrwy 3y ago
  I suspect he may have had a preemptive opinion on that even though he wasn't around any more when it started. “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.” - SB We are told a version of things, and maybe that version is even mostly true, but I'm less sure about this now then I was when I was a kid in grade school.
  - lagolinguini 3y ago
    We are often told that the conflict in WW2 was a conflict between a clearly good side and a clearly evil side. While it's true one of the sides was certainly the a much greater evil, it would be disingenuous to hide the short comings of the "good" side. The USA was a country that at the time still practiced segregation, and was the only country to use nuclear weapons. The British, French and Belgian empires and their conduct in India and their African colonies was not far off from what the Germans were accused of. It's not good to whitewash these facts.
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      So, resisting attack isn't allowed unless you're pure as the driven snow? This is nonsense.
      - lagolinguini 3y ago
        The points I am trying to make is that it isn't black and white as "resisting attack", and that the history that is taught shouldn't be whitewashed. The Indians fought in the 2 world wars for the freedoms of others while their own freedoms were not guaranteed under British colonialism. 1/6th of all the "British" forces in ww2 were Indian, while India was suffering British induced famines due to redirection of supplies and scorched earth policy of the British in the south east Asian theatre. Do you think it's fair to them to not acknowledge this fact and teach it in history?
        3y ago
- DubiousPusher 3y ago
  I think it's complicated. I don't think Butler believed that every single war was unjustified. When reading 'War is a Racket', you have to look at the context of war in which we lived. He was too young to fight in the American Civil War. So his consistent experiences of war were those fought in America's most blatantly Imperial phase. Even compared to Vietnam, Iraq, etc, the wars of the turn of the century were cravenly driven by capital and imperial ambitions. And to that matter, some of what brought the U.S. into the orbit of WWII was a lower key version of the kind of foreign policies of that earlier era. Disrupting Japanese interests in Asia was very much about economic benefit and power balance in the mode of realpolitik. And in the end, the Roosevelt administration remains unique in American history for how hard it pushed against colonialism. Truman was much more aligned with British interests in this way than FDR. So while the war is justified in the name of stopping two monstrous regimes, its precursors and its aftermath do carry a fair amount of the same taint that Butler thoroughly observed in his time.
  - meteor333 3y ago
    There are always at least two parties involved in a war, an aggressor and a defendant. 'War is a Racket' is always true or war unjustified in case of the aggressor. Defendant usually doesn't have much choice in it. Even the example you've taken for WWII, UK and US weren't the aggressor. The war already at their door for British, so they had a little choice in it. Similarly for US they knew, if they don't do something early enough, they could end up being a victim or suffer from it eventually. So they had to support Britain in the war.
    - DubiousPusher 3y ago
      > There are always at least two parties involved in a war, an aggressor and a defendant. There are many wars where multiple sides are belligerent. There are wars where a side manages to profit or benefit from a conflict without appearing as a belligerent. And there are wars where it's not clear who the beligerent is. In the French Revolutionary wars, France appears as the aggressor, as they declared war first. But they declared war as a pre-emptive to gain advantage in a conflict with Austria over Bourbon restoration that they felt sure would come. And judging by contemporary history (the partitions of Poland, the Hungarian rebellion, the Revolutions of 1848, etc), they were probably right. There is the Franco-Prussian war, a war which was essentially desired by both sides. Most civil wars rarely have a clear beligerent side with slow escalation of violence by multiple parties. We are deep into the era of nationalistic propaganda so we are used to conceiving of wars as clear conflicts between two cohesive political units: one the aggressor and one the defender. But that is a concpetion mostly born out of our experiences in the 20th century and even then it is highly biased by the popular narrative of WWII.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  [dead]
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  "told you so" — WWII was one of the best things to happen to the US from an economic standpoint. Before joining the war effort the US was selling weapons to the allies and making piles of money doing so. Post WWII the US had the largest economic boom in history.
  - pmoriarty 3y ago
    It was also one of the worst things to happen to Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan. All of them were completely devastated, while the US was largely unscathed. I really wonder what the world would look like today if they'd managed to avoid this senseless war and/or the first World War.
    - lizardking 3y ago
      This is one of the main reasons for our economic prosperity post WW II. You have room for a lot of excess in your economy when your global competition are all living in smoldering piles of rubble.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > WWII was one of the best things to happen to the US from an economic standpoint Sadly, that is true. > the US was selling weapons to the allies and making piles of money doing so Indeed. War Is a Racket.
- Bran_son 3y ago
  Maybe "We may have been fighting the wrong enemy all along." - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-patton-say-we-defeated-the-wrong-enemy https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-p...
mikece 3y ago
Written by one of the very few (only?) people to have received two Medals of Honor. Dude knew a thing or two about war.
- Ancapistani 3y ago
  He claimed also to have been approached to be installed as dictator of the US. He immediately exposed the plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
  - wyldberry 3y ago
    The real question is: if it's true, what do you think those who tried learned from it? Did they find a way to achieve their goal without any outright observable changes from the public's perspective?
    - z3c0 3y ago
      Yes, mostly through the ideas of Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee.
    - pphysch 3y ago
      It sure puts the 60s in a new light.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Nobody went to jail, the united states is primarily run by business interests since the 80s, and facism is alive and well in the states. It sounds to me like they got exactly what they wanted, just had to be patient.
      - knute 3y ago
        > the united states is primarily run by business interests since the 80s The 1880s.
        3y ago
DirectorKrennic 3y ago
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." Faramir, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Eisenhower
- globalise83 3y ago
  Totally fair, and yet, the incidental fruits of WW2 such as radar, powerful long-range aircraft, all kinds of advances in electronics, radio communications, atomic energy etc. led to 60 years of incredible subsequent technological progress and economic development that without any question raised enormous numbers of people out of starvation, abject poverty and misery.
  - DubiousPusher 3y ago
    I recommend checking out the fantastic, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth". The book provides very strong evidence that the era of American growth which produced our modern standard of living starts in 1870 and actually ends in 1940, though there was also an era of less important but still strong growth from 1940-1970. Furthermore, this is a bit of a counterfactual as we don't actually know the trajectory of technology without the war. Some thing we know for certain though, mass electrification and public health were well underway before the war and continued through it. These being probably the two most important developments that improved productivity and the quality of life for most people.
wyldberry 3y ago
In Marine Corps bootcamp, this man is lionized for his accomplishments during service. After my service ended I read war is a racket and it profoundly changed a lot of my viewpoints.
- einpoklum 3y ago
  > I read war is a racket ... After my service ended If only we could get US marines to read this before their service started. :-(
  - wyldberry 3y ago
    That would likely require a return to mandatory service.
    - einpoklum 3y ago
      Return to mandatory service is a possible action of the US (federal) government, I was talking about an oppositionary initiative.
      - wyldberry 3y ago
        I understand where you are coming from, it's just naive to think that a nation state won't form a counter action to preserve it's ability to wage war.
    - jollyllama 3y ago
      It's not going to happen. You couldn't get enough able-bodied people to show up or communities to enforce it. The ideals that made this possible for Vietnam will die with the boomers.
      - Jotra7 3y ago
        [dead]
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
mikece 3y ago
[flagged]
- kibwen 3y ago
  This is likely being downvoted because the US isn't donating weapons to Ukraine, it's leasing them to Ukraine in the same manner that the US leased weapons to the UK during WWII. The UK only finished repaying that debt in 2006.
  - glogla 3y ago
    It is being downvoted (hopefully) because it is known Russian propaganda point.
  - keonix 3y ago
    > US isn't donating weapons to Ukraine, it's leasing them Could you kindly support your statement with the source? AFAIK most aid provided to Ukraine is not under lend-lease but donated to them
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Most aid takes the form of cash for humanitarian support, ~disposing of~ donating old hardware to Ukraine, or a loan for the express intent of buying a modern system. The vast majority of the "billions" given to Ukraine is made up of stuff that we actively are trying to throw away.
    - kibwen 3y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Lend-Lease_Act_of_2022 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Le... "Any loan or lease of defense articles to the Government of Ukraine under paragraph (1) shall be subject to all applicable laws concerning the return of and reimbursement and repayment for defense articles loan or leased to foreign governments." Can you provide a source for your statement that these were donations?
      - 3y ago
celtoid 3y ago
"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." - Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933 speech
swayvil 3y ago
But when the bad guys are doing all kinds of bad stuff. When your good friends in the media are telling you all about all this bad stuff that the bad guys are doing. When all your friends are hot to go out and fight these bad guys. What can a right-thinking person do but join the fight?
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  Style note: I can't tell if you're echoing propaganda or parodying it.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    Tie always goes to the echo side when dealing with propaganda
    - operatingthetan 3y ago
      That's why satire tends to be exaggerated to an extreme degree.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - swayvil 3y ago
    Stripped of context, it certainly does look suspicious.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    Parody
jmartrican 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. The problem is that if you are being attacked, you will gladly allow people to make big profit if they save lives. You can try to fight the war without profit but you might not like the results. Ultimately, wars are started by governments. They cajole the resources of the nation to fight the enemy. Each country has the things they are good at it and they will use those things to their advantage. In the US we are a free market society and happily give out big rewards (aka profits) to those that can make a difference and build things that the nation wants. So the reason I say I have mixed feelings is because I can imagine a world where the entities that make profit off of war can use their influence to prod the nation into war. And this should be prevented. I suspect this has happened in the past.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  It's called the military industrial complex and it happens all the time.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
  I'm often very conflicted about USA's history of military use in the last 100+ years. Imperialistic? I don't know. But what I do know is that I would rather be a South Korean than a North Korean. And post-defeat Japan has been one of the preeminent countries in the entire world.
  - waffleiron 3y ago
    South Korea was a brutal dictatorship for quite some time, just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military intervention is to thank for that.
    - VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
      > just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military intervention is to thank for that. The alternative was that the entire peninsula would be "North Korea". And then there would never be any chance of formulating a functional democratic society.
nickpinkston 3y ago
Note that he was possibly also asked to lead a coup against FDR [1] which was never substantiated, but rhymes with other stuff going on at that time such as that covered by "Invisible Hands: A narrative history of the influential businessmen who fought to roll back the New Deal." [2] These conservative groups were also heavily involved with extremist anti-communist and oft times pro-fascist efforts, even involving the CIA such as that covered by "The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government" [3] that shows how Dulles & Co. supported these same rightist American elites' business interests. One of these was Fred Koch - ie father of the infamous Koch Brothers, who expanded his campaign massively to this day. Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" final speech [4] actually was made because he was heavily pressured by these same groups to both profit from fighting the Cold War and as well as encourage its anti-communism to remove the threat to their wealth. Anti-communism in the West can largely be viewed as wealthy businessmen being scared of getting their assets seized and making a long-term scare campaign to get the public onboard. I'm not saying I like communism at all, but their reaction was often very bad for the American people and the world in general, and it continues in forms to this day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2751831 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2751831 [3] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  Also a reminder that after the 1932 German presidential election [1], won by Paul von Hindenburg, 84 years old, with 53%, he appointed as chancellor one Adolf Hitler in 1933 following the advice of Franz von Papen, the conservative chancellor who served in 1932 and who would have rather see the Nazi Party in power than the Communist Party (KPD) led by Ernst Thälmann. In 1934 Hitler dissolves the presidency and calls himself Führer und Reichskanzler. Ernst Thälmann will be executed under Hitler's orders in 1944, after 11 years of solitary confinement. That's how the Nazis torture (Hans Litten [2], the lawyer who stood against Hitler in the 1931 Eden Dance Palace trial, was also tortured for 5 years, 1932-38). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_elect... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Litten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Litten
m463 3y ago
Also, Eisenhower's farewell address... "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...
- rgrieselhuber 3y ago
  One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor.
  - wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
    The Korean War began and was fought under a Democrat. It was ended by a Republican. The Vietnam War began under one Democrat, escalated and spread beyond Vietnam under his Democratic successor, and then under a Republican. It was ended by another Republican. The Persian Gulf War was entirely a Republican affair. The Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia were overseen by a Democrat. The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      you're confusion "the left" with "democrats". democrats are centrist relative to the left.
      - RajT88 3y ago
        Indeed "Leftists" mostly vote Democratic for lack of a more viable alternative, but many do not consider themselves Democrats. Even really smart and educated people I know are surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a party affiliation.
        pessimizer 3y ago
Animats 3y ago
Butler's experience was from the period when the United Fruit Company more or less ruled Central America.[1] At times U.S Marines were used to enforce US authority, and Butler was a leader in some of those operations. That's why he says war is a racket. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  That's certainly not the only reason he says war is a racket. He provides many examples (WWI notably).
- beambot 3y ago
  > [War's] bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. Still as relevant to today's veterans as in 1935.
  - Animats 3y ago
    Not really. Wars are mostly money-losers today. They're more likely to be a power trip for some leader.
    - joe_the_user 3y ago
      I'm not understanding your comment. Wars have generally been money losers for the nations involved and money-makers for businesses and individuals connected to power (Krupps to United Fruit to Wagner Group to etc). Wars have generally involved the egos of leaders but these leaders nearly always consider their friends who'll get rich through it.
    - beambot 3y ago
      Looking at the P&L of Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing and the entire military-industrial complex, I'll politely disagree that it's a "money-loser". Government loses (we'll, distributes conjured dollars from it's balance sheet), taxpayers lose, and war fighters lose. But profiteers win -- hence: War is a Racket.
mkadlec 3y ago
Smedly Butler!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 3y ago
And societies never learn.
omginternets 3y ago
I've only skimmed this essay, and plan to read it more carefully later, so please be charitable if I've overlooked an important passage. Butler's argument appears to be conflating two questions: 1. Does anyone unfairly profit from war? 2. Is the unfair profit the result of a racket? I think few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "yes", but I don't think he's made a convincing argument that the unfair spoils of war are either necessarily or overwhelmingly the result of a racket. Here I would like to note that the Butler's definition of "racket" is rather loose. The strongest interpretation of his definition, I think, is that a racket is something that is orchestrated covertly by few, for their own benefit, and at the expense of the many. There is another word for this: a conspiracy. The American Heritage Dictionary has what I consider to be a fair definition for conspiracy: "an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act." So to show that war is indeed a racket, Butler would have to demonstrate that one of two things is true: 1. War can only emerge from conspiracy 2. The overwhelming majority of wars have historically emerged from conspiracy Demonstrating a conspiracy in turn is a two-part enterprise: (1) showing the act was illegal, wrongful or subversive, and (2) showing that a group of people agreed to perform it together. As far as I can tell, we are only shown instances of profiteering, and perhaps individual corruption in the form of draft-dodging and whatnot. This is outrageous, to be sure, but falls short of demonstrating that a "racket" is at play. And while I can think of recent examples of wars that do qualify as a racket (at least, IMO), Butler's more general claim that "War is (effectively always) a racket" seems like hyperbole.
- angry_albatross 3y ago
  You probably meant to say that few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "no"
  - omginternets 3y ago
    Whoops. That’s an unfortunate mistake.
Barrin92 3y ago
>A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the 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 very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. Just because people make fortunes from war doesn't mean that this is the essential characteristic of war. People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its cause. War is a historic universal, and in fact it was most intense in pre-modern societies. Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Long before we had organized commercial activity or opportunity for rackets we had warrior cultures. The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology. Far from it elites often even have to reign the flames of war in as populations whip themselves into a frenzy. The fact that war generally benefits few people, or sometimes even nobody at all doesn't imply that the majority of people weren't genuinely enthusiastic about it, although they'll typically deny it later.
- graublau 3y ago
  Blackrock approves this comment
- chrisco255 3y ago
  > Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Those are always just emotional excuses for gaining more power over resources. If you ignore incentives and take everyone's word at face value, then we're all saints and nary a sin has ever been committed in the name of some righteous cause. Mutual misunderstandings, is all, I suppose. > People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its cause. Author took care to mark the fortunes of companies at peacetime vs war time and noted that fortunes increased by an order of magnitude in some cases, as a result of war. If your net worth or social standing is due to jump one or two orders of magnitude as a result of a war or two, your subconscious mind will find more reasons than are rational to justify and support a war. You'll say it's to save your people. You'll say it's self-defense. You'll say it's necessary and just. You'll ignore any path to peace that might avert such a disaster, in particular if you never have to enter the fox holes yourself. That's the author's point. Rackets aren't always some men conspiring to gain power or money or fame in smoke-filled parlor rooms. Often, they are emergent properties of incentivized systems. > The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology. The only part that is wrong about that statement is the idea of the elites being 'shadowy'. No, they conduct their racket right out in the public eye. This isn't a particularly insightful phenomenon, by the way. Power always follows a power law of distribution. Of course the elites are primarily responsible for war. If the elites are ever against war, it just means that the incentives of the moment are temporarily more favorable for peace. As a blatant example, let's take the American Civil War for example. Well over 90% of white southerners didn't own slaves. So why would they go to war and lay down their life, by the hundreds of thousands, if they stood to gain almost nothing? Most of these kids were raised on subsistence farms and didn't even know how to read. Of course, to those boys it was a cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights, yadi yadi. That's what they were sold. But the ones really pulling the strings in that war, were the rich Southern elites, who did in fact own many slaves and stood to lose a great deal over Lincoln's election. Again, this is true of the vast majority of wars and battles in human history. Pick your time and place in history.
sorokod 3y ago
Smedley Butler, previously on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=smedley%20butler&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
TheFreim 3y ago
It's interesting to observe people repeat the "war is racket" line while also supporting wars because "their" side is allegedly the virtuous one (and anyone pointing this out is peddling "propaganda" of "the enemy" in the totally virtuous war).
- l33t233372 3y ago
  Wars of defense are entirely different in my opinion.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    Those are not up for debate, as the US has never been properly attacked, as far as I know. (The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor might be an exception, but that wasn't the US mainland, though the US attack on Japan did involve the Japanese mainland, so this probably doesn't count as a purely defensive war.)
    - juve1996 3y ago
      Are you really going to suggest an attack that killed 2,403 Americans, sunk five U.S. battleships & damaged 4 others ships, and destroyed 188 aircraft, is not a proper attack? because it wasn't on the "mainland?"
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        An attack made with the explicit purpose to prevent the US from putting up a fight as Japan took internationally recognized US territory.
      - cubefox 3y ago
        The point is that the US war against Japan wasn't a purely defensive war.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
w10-1 3y ago
He came from generations of influential Quaker's (pacifists) but defied his father in signing up for the Spanish-American war before he left school. He lied about his age to be commissioned as an officer. It's no surprise the military didn't meet his idealistic expectations. His awards were probably not legitimate. At the time, his father was the chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee, overseeing the budget of the Marines. E.g., one award was for a spy mission that consisted of taking a train incognito into Mexico. His claims in "War is a racket" were designed to elevate his reputation as a truth-teller and good guy, an unwitting accomplice.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I don't think the world gives the US enough flak for the Spanish-American war. It was an invented war to steal territory. No wonder he became cynical.
major505 3y ago
Smedley Butler, the writer of this book, latter in life claimed he was sought in a facist conspiracy to lead and overthown Franklin Roosevelt and assume power. He claimed to had stayed in the conspiracy long enough to find out the identity of the conspirators (owners of big america monopolies), and denounced their plans to the president.
rektide 3y ago
Shout out to @floydnoel for citing this yesterday in the F-35 Malpractice submission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056584 Very apt then, & what a crazy topic! How the government has payed a ton of money to develop & purchase jets it basically doesnt/can't own operate or repair. Right to repair/upgrade at the highest level. A racket!
Lammy 3y ago
I agree with Butler's point but think he's missing the forest for the trees by focusing on territory acquisition and profits from production of war materials. The real point of war is that it's a way to farm us (the masses) for rapid development of promising new technologies, e.g. — — US Civil war: Rifles, telegraph, railroads — World War 1: Optics, radio communication, aviation, tracked vehicles — World War 2: Computers, cryptography, atomic energy, radar and microwave communication, global logistics (fuels, containerization, etc) — Cold War: SPAAAAACE
rib3ye 3y ago
This has to be the most re-posted piece on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?q=War+Is+a+Racket https://hn.algolia.com/?q=War+Is+a+Racket
leobg 3y ago
There’s also The War Racket by Harry Browne (2004).
jasmer 3y ago
The people driving the wars generally don't profit from the wars, and it's generally not true that the war profiteers have that much influence over spending during war time, rather, they are a bit like doctors during a plague and have huge pricing leverage once a war starts. There are almost zero wars which are profitable even for the antagonist. 'Making needed weapons during war is exceedingly profitable' - yes it is, and often nations are in ruin after the fact, which will lead to profiteering like 'a racket'. And the proceeds will indeed go to very few.
steviedotboston 3y ago
[flagged]
lionelholt 3y ago
Predating that is Ludwell Denny's "We Fight For Oil" from 1928. I have a physical copy of this book. Its mere existence says a lot, and still does ... https://www.yamaguchy.com/library/denny/denny_index.html https://www.yamaguchy.com/library/denny/denny_index.html
RadixDLT 3y ago
no, racket lang is a racket
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ajuc 3y ago
[flagged]
- StanislavPetrov 3y ago
  It was the four decades that General Smedley Butler spent fighting wars of aggression on behalf of the United States that led him to write "War is a Racket". At no point in the history of the United States were we "pacifists" - despite the revisionist history of those who choose to ignore our long, bloody history throughout Central and South America before we embarked on our global imperial crusade in 1917. >There would be no Holocaust and millions of lives would be saved if people attacked nazi germany preventively in 1935 as proposed by Piłsudski. There would have been no Holocaust and no Nazi Germany if Woodrow Wilson didn't plunge the United States into the war between crumbling European empires in 1917, and had instead kept the United States out of the war (a message he campaigned on) and forced them to come to an equitable and lasting peace on their own terms. As Ferdinand Foch (The Supreme Allied Commander during WW1) said after Versailles, "This is not a peace, it is an armistice for 20 years". Instead, our interference allowing England and France to put their boot on the throat of Germany, destroying them economically and leading directly to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. >If Ukraine was accepted into NATO in 2008 as Eastern European countries and USA proposed - there would be no 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas and 2022 invasion of whole Ukraine. If NATO didn't insist on expanding after the fall of the Soviet Union (as promised by James Baker and others) and the United States didn't spend billions of dollars to help overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, there would have been no 2014 annexation of Crimea. If the NATO-aligned regime in Ukraine upheld its obligations outlined in the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 treaties, there would have been no invasion of Donbas or Ukraine in 2022. >You cannot solve problems with wishful thinking. This is very true. Nor can you solve problems with delusional thinking. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the United States and NATO have invaded and destroyed Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria. We have been bombing countries around the world from Pakistan to Somalia - bombings which continue with little fanfare and practically no attention from the media. The rest of the world (everyone outside of the US, EU and Australia/New Zealand) are well aware of our complete lack of moral and legal authority due to our long and ongoing history of worldwide aggression. The incredibly hypocrisy of pointing the finger at Russia's invasion of Ukraine while our troops right now, today, illegally occupy Syria is only lost on those who are thoroughly propagandized and/or entirely ignorant of the situation. >Pacifism only works if both sides believe in it. The same goes for international law and a "rules based international system". It doesn't work when the unwritten rules don't apply to us, but apply to every country that we consider hostile. The US Congress passed a bill authorizing the invasion of the Hague if any US citizen was ever indicted for war crimes! At the end of the day we can either strive for a peaceful world where every country is held to the same standards for their behavior, or we can have the world we live in where might makes right - we can't have it both ways.
MollyRealized 3y ago
It's worth noting Smedley Butler and the Business Plot [1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

383 points by pasquinelli 3y ago

EA-3167 3y ago

What do you figure he had to say after 1945?

DDSDev 3y ago
For anyone curious, Smedley Butler died in 1940[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
- deeg 3y ago
  To anyone just passing through the comments, the Wiki article on Butler is a worthy read. He was an interesting person.
  - DicIfTEx 3y ago
    The YouTube series Knowing Better had a very good episode about Butler and this essay too: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Lg-nUy2DalM https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Lg-nUy2DalM
- jhbadger 3y ago
  Which was probably good for his reputation. Some people die at the right time. Had he lived a bit longer he might have come out against entry into WWII, which would not have aged well.
  - buildsjets 3y ago
    He was an Anti-Fascist, but wanted to prevent a war with the Fascists. In fact, he was so Anti-Fascist, that the US Government apologized to Benito Mussolini on his behalf, and court-martialed him over his Anti-Fascist comments about Mussolini. Source: New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/30/archives/united-states-apologizes-to-mussolini-general-butler-to-be.html https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/30/archives/united-states-ap...
    - buildsjets 3y ago
      Also, record of the apology from the Department of State. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1931v02/d663 https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1931v02/d6...
    - allemagne 3y ago
      Sounds like he won a moral victory over the US Government and the Fascists, and then the US Government (ever full of contradictions) later helped depose the actual Fascists through the war he wanted to avoid.
    - thrwwXZTYE 3y ago
      > He was an Anti-Fascist, but wanted to prevent a war with the Fascists That's rich :) For all intents and purposes you're supporting it, you just like to support it while feeling morally superior.
TremendousJudge 3y ago
What would you expect?
swayvil 3y ago
I appreciate the brevity but what exactly are you saying? That WW2 wasn't a racket? Is that your thesis here?
- dekhn 3y ago
  I'd interpret the question as: "given the copious evidence that the US did not enter WWII intentionally to make money for industrialists, is Smedley's thesis that all war is a racket reasonable? To what extent are humanitarian or democratic concerns as important as war profits in the decision to go to war?" (with the unstated assumption that the US was just in its choice to fight the Axis) I actually don't think Smedley would have changed his message at all; I think he started from a false premise that he was 100% convinced of, and would have pointed at the enormous profits made by war industrialists in the US during WWII. He might not also notice that post-war US was the most economically productive country of all time, that it opened up huge options of African Americans, or even really recognize quite what motivated Hitler and the Nazis.
  - mythrwy 3y ago
    Maybe the US didn't enter WWII with the idea of making a profit. I don't know. But what is undeniable is the US exited WWII in a very good position and lots of profits were made.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      What does that matter though? Should we have bombed ourselves because germany and japan couldn't do it?
  - swayvil 3y ago
    So, yes. You are saying "nuh uh smedly, ww2 was a proper justified fight"
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
bell-cot 3y ago
General Rule: If a war is existential, then countries which want to keep existing usually find ways to turn down the "racket" aspects.
mythrwy 3y ago
I suspect he may have had a preemptive opinion on that even though he wasn't around any more when it started. “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.” - SB We are told a version of things, and maybe that version is even mostly true, but I'm less sure about this now then I was when I was a kid in grade school.
- lagolinguini 3y ago
  We are often told that the conflict in WW2 was a conflict between a clearly good side and a clearly evil side. While it's true one of the sides was certainly the a much greater evil, it would be disingenuous to hide the short comings of the "good" side. The USA was a country that at the time still practiced segregation, and was the only country to use nuclear weapons. The British, French and Belgian empires and their conduct in India and their African colonies was not far off from what the Germans were accused of. It's not good to whitewash these facts.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    So, resisting attack isn't allowed unless you're pure as the driven snow? This is nonsense.
    - lagolinguini 3y ago
      The points I am trying to make is that it isn't black and white as "resisting attack", and that the history that is taught shouldn't be whitewashed. The Indians fought in the 2 world wars for the freedoms of others while their own freedoms were not guaranteed under British colonialism. 1/6th of all the "British" forces in ww2 were Indian, while India was suffering British induced famines due to redirection of supplies and scorched earth policy of the British in the south east Asian theatre. Do you think it's fair to them to not acknowledge this fact and teach it in history?
      - 3y ago
DubiousPusher 3y ago
I think it's complicated. I don't think Butler believed that every single war was unjustified. When reading 'War is a Racket', you have to look at the context of war in which we lived. He was too young to fight in the American Civil War. So his consistent experiences of war were those fought in America's most blatantly Imperial phase. Even compared to Vietnam, Iraq, etc, the wars of the turn of the century were cravenly driven by capital and imperial ambitions. And to that matter, some of what brought the U.S. into the orbit of WWII was a lower key version of the kind of foreign policies of that earlier era. Disrupting Japanese interests in Asia was very much about economic benefit and power balance in the mode of realpolitik. And in the end, the Roosevelt administration remains unique in American history for how hard it pushed against colonialism. Truman was much more aligned with British interests in this way than FDR. So while the war is justified in the name of stopping two monstrous regimes, its precursors and its aftermath do carry a fair amount of the same taint that Butler thoroughly observed in his time.
- meteor333 3y ago
  There are always at least two parties involved in a war, an aggressor and a defendant. 'War is a Racket' is always true or war unjustified in case of the aggressor. Defendant usually doesn't have much choice in it. Even the example you've taken for WWII, UK and US weren't the aggressor. The war already at their door for British, so they had a little choice in it. Similarly for US they knew, if they don't do something early enough, they could end up being a victim or suffer from it eventually. So they had to support Britain in the war.
  - DubiousPusher 3y ago
    > There are always at least two parties involved in a war, an aggressor and a defendant. There are many wars where multiple sides are belligerent. There are wars where a side manages to profit or benefit from a conflict without appearing as a belligerent. And there are wars where it's not clear who the beligerent is. In the French Revolutionary wars, France appears as the aggressor, as they declared war first. But they declared war as a pre-emptive to gain advantage in a conflict with Austria over Bourbon restoration that they felt sure would come. And judging by contemporary history (the partitions of Poland, the Hungarian rebellion, the Revolutions of 1848, etc), they were probably right. There is the Franco-Prussian war, a war which was essentially desired by both sides. Most civil wars rarely have a clear beligerent side with slow escalation of violence by multiple parties. We are deep into the era of nationalistic propaganda so we are used to conceiving of wars as clear conflicts between two cohesive political units: one the aggressor and one the defender. But that is a concpetion mostly born out of our experiences in the 20th century and even then it is highly biased by the popular narrative of WWII.
thsksbd 3y ago
[dead]
micromacrofoot 3y ago
"told you so" — WWII was one of the best things to happen to the US from an economic standpoint. Before joining the war effort the US was selling weapons to the allies and making piles of money doing so. Post WWII the US had the largest economic boom in history.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  It was also one of the worst things to happen to Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan. All of them were completely devastated, while the US was largely unscathed. I really wonder what the world would look like today if they'd managed to avoid this senseless war and/or the first World War.
  - lizardking 3y ago
    This is one of the main reasons for our economic prosperity post WW II. You have room for a lot of excess in your economy when your global competition are all living in smoldering piles of rubble.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > WWII was one of the best things to happen to the US from an economic standpoint Sadly, that is true. > the US was selling weapons to the allies and making piles of money doing so Indeed. War Is a Racket.
Bran_son 3y ago
Maybe "We may have been fighting the wrong enemy all along." - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-patton-say-we-defeated-the-wrong-enemy https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-p...

mikece 3y ago

Written by one of the very few (only?) people to have received two Medals of Honor. Dude knew a thing or two about war.

Ancapistani 3y ago
He claimed also to have been approached to be installed as dictator of the US. He immediately exposed the plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
- wyldberry 3y ago
  The real question is: if it's true, what do you think those who tried learned from it? Did they find a way to achieve their goal without any outright observable changes from the public's perspective?
  - z3c0 3y ago
    Yes, mostly through the ideas of Edward Bernays and Ivy Lee.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    It sure puts the 60s in a new light.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Nobody went to jail, the united states is primarily run by business interests since the 80s, and facism is alive and well in the states. It sounds to me like they got exactly what they wanted, just had to be patient.
    - knute 3y ago
      > the united states is primarily run by business interests since the 80s The 1880s.
      - 3y ago

DirectorKrennic 3y ago

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." Faramir, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Eisenhower

globalise83 3y ago
Totally fair, and yet, the incidental fruits of WW2 such as radar, powerful long-range aircraft, all kinds of advances in electronics, radio communications, atomic energy etc. led to 60 years of incredible subsequent technological progress and economic development that without any question raised enormous numbers of people out of starvation, abject poverty and misery.
- DubiousPusher 3y ago
  I recommend checking out the fantastic, "The Rise and Fall of American Growth". The book provides very strong evidence that the era of American growth which produced our modern standard of living starts in 1870 and actually ends in 1940, though there was also an era of less important but still strong growth from 1940-1970. Furthermore, this is a bit of a counterfactual as we don't actually know the trajectory of technology without the war. Some thing we know for certain though, mass electrification and public health were well underway before the war and continued through it. These being probably the two most important developments that improved productivity and the quality of life for most people.

wyldberry 3y ago

In Marine Corps bootcamp, this man is lionized for his accomplishments during service. After my service ended I read war is a racket and it profoundly changed a lot of my viewpoints.

einpoklum 3y ago
> I read war is a racket ... After my service ended If only we could get US marines to read this before their service started. :-(
- wyldberry 3y ago
  That would likely require a return to mandatory service.
  - einpoklum 3y ago
    Return to mandatory service is a possible action of the US (federal) government, I was talking about an oppositionary initiative.
    - wyldberry 3y ago
      I understand where you are coming from, it's just naive to think that a nation state won't form a counter action to preserve it's ability to wage war.
  - jollyllama 3y ago
    It's not going to happen. You couldn't get enough able-bodied people to show up or communities to enforce it. The ideals that made this possible for Vietnam will die with the boomers.
    - Jotra7 3y ago
      [dead]
    - mrguyorama 3y ago

mikece 3y ago

[flagged]

kibwen 3y ago
This is likely being downvoted because the US isn't donating weapons to Ukraine, it's leasing them to Ukraine in the same manner that the US leased weapons to the UK during WWII. The UK only finished repaying that debt in 2006.
- glogla 3y ago
  It is being downvoted (hopefully) because it is known Russian propaganda point.
- keonix 3y ago
  > US isn't donating weapons to Ukraine, it's leasing them Could you kindly support your statement with the source? AFAIK most aid provided to Ukraine is not under lend-lease but donated to them
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Most aid takes the form of cash for humanitarian support, ~disposing of~ donating old hardware to Ukraine, or a loan for the express intent of buying a modern system. The vast majority of the "billions" given to Ukraine is made up of stuff that we actively are trying to throw away.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Lend-Lease_Act_of_2022 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Le... "Any loan or lease of defense articles to the Government of Ukraine under paragraph (1) shall be subject to all applicable laws concerning the return of and reimbursement and repayment for defense articles loan or leased to foreign governments." Can you provide a source for your statement that these were donations?
    - 3y ago

celtoid 3y ago

"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." - Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, 1933 speech

swayvil 3y ago

But when the bad guys are doing all kinds of bad stuff. When your good friends in the media are telling you all about all this bad stuff that the bad guys are doing. When all your friends are hot to go out and fight these bad guys. What can a right-thinking person do but join the fight?

joe_the_user 3y ago
Style note: I can't tell if you're echoing propaganda or parodying it.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  Tie always goes to the echo side when dealing with propaganda
  - operatingthetan 3y ago
    That's why satire tends to be exaggerated to an extreme degree.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- swayvil 3y ago
  Stripped of context, it certainly does look suspicious.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Parody

jmartrican 3y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. The problem is that if you are being attacked, you will gladly allow people to make big profit if they save lives. You can try to fight the war without profit but you might not like the results. Ultimately, wars are started by governments. They cajole the resources of the nation to fight the enemy. Each country has the things they are good at it and they will use those things to their advantage. In the US we are a free market society and happily give out big rewards (aka profits) to those that can make a difference and build things that the nation wants. So the reason I say I have mixed feelings is because I can imagine a world where the entities that make profit off of war can use their influence to prod the nation into war. And this should be prevented. I suspect this has happened in the past.

micromacrofoot 3y ago
It's called the military industrial complex and it happens all the time.
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
I'm often very conflicted about USA's history of military use in the last 100+ years. Imperialistic? I don't know. But what I do know is that I would rather be a South Korean than a North Korean. And post-defeat Japan has been one of the preeminent countries in the entire world.
- waffleiron 3y ago
  South Korea was a brutal dictatorship for quite some time, just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military intervention is to thank for that.
  - VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
    > just because they aren't now doesn't mean the US's military intervention is to thank for that. The alternative was that the entire peninsula would be "North Korea". And then there would never be any chance of formulating a functional democratic society.

nickpinkston 3y ago

Note that he was possibly also asked to lead a coup against FDR [1] which was never substantiated, but rhymes with other stuff going on at that time such as that covered by "Invisible Hands: A narrative history of the influential businessmen who fought to roll back the New Deal." [2] These conservative groups were also heavily involved with extremist anti-communist and oft times pro-fascist efforts, even involving the CIA such as that covered by "The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government" [3] that shows how Dulles & Co. supported these same rightist American elites' business interests. One of these was Fred Koch - ie father of the infamous Koch Brothers, who expanded his campaign massively to this day. Eisenhower's "Military Industrial Complex" final speech [4] actually was made because he was heavily pressured by these same groups to both profit from fighting the Cold War and as well as encourage its anti-communism to remove the threat to their wealth. Anti-communism in the West can largely be viewed as wealthy businessmen being scared of getting their assets seized and making a long-term scare campaign to get the public onboard. I'm not saying I like communism at all, but their reaction was often very bad for the American people and the world in general, and it continues in forms to this day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2751831 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2751831 [3] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...

ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
Also a reminder that after the 1932 German presidential election [1], won by Paul von Hindenburg, 84 years old, with 53%, he appointed as chancellor one Adolf Hitler in 1933 following the advice of Franz von Papen, the conservative chancellor who served in 1932 and who would have rather see the Nazi Party in power than the Communist Party (KPD) led by Ernst Thälmann. In 1934 Hitler dissolves the presidency and calls himself Führer und Reichskanzler. Ernst Thälmann will be executed under Hitler's orders in 1944, after 11 years of solitary confinement. That's how the Nazis torture (Hans Litten [2], the lawyer who stood against Hitler in the 1931 Eden Dance Palace trial, was also tortured for 5 years, 1932-38). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_elect... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Litten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Litten

m463 3y ago

Also, Eisenhower's farewell address... "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_addres...

rgrieselhuber 3y ago
One of the most disappointing things in American politics in the last ten to fifteen years has been watching the left abandon their antiwar fervor.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  The Korean War began and was fought under a Democrat. It was ended by a Republican. The Vietnam War began under one Democrat, escalated and spread beyond Vietnam under his Democratic successor, and then under a Republican. It was ended by another Republican. The Persian Gulf War was entirely a Republican affair. The Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia were overseen by a Democrat. The "war on terror" was started by a Republican who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and continued for nearly 8 more years under a Democrat.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    you're confusion "the left" with "democrats". democrats are centrist relative to the left.
    - RajT88 3y ago
      Indeed "Leftists" mostly vote Democratic for lack of a more viable alternative, but many do not consider themselves Democrats. Even really smart and educated people I know are surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a party affiliation.
      - pessimizer 3y ago

Animats 3y ago

Butler's experience was from the period when the United Fruit Company more or less ruled Central America.[1] At times U.S Marines were used to enforce US authority, and Butler was a leader in some of those operations. That's why he says war is a racket. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

joe_the_user 3y ago
That's certainly not the only reason he says war is a racket. He provides many examples (WWI notably).
beambot 3y ago
> [War's] bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. Still as relevant to today's veterans as in 1935.
- Animats 3y ago
  Not really. Wars are mostly money-losers today. They're more likely to be a power trip for some leader.
  - joe_the_user 3y ago
    I'm not understanding your comment. Wars have generally been money losers for the nations involved and money-makers for businesses and individuals connected to power (Krupps to United Fruit to Wagner Group to etc). Wars have generally involved the egos of leaders but these leaders nearly always consider their friends who'll get rich through it.
  - beambot 3y ago
    Looking at the P&L of Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing and the entire military-industrial complex, I'll politely disagree that it's a "money-loser". Government loses (we'll, distributes conjured dollars from it's balance sheet), taxpayers lose, and war fighters lose. But profiteers win -- hence: War is a Racket.

mkadlec 3y ago

Smedly Butler!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 3y ago

And societies never learn.

omginternets 3y ago

I've only skimmed this essay, and plan to read it more carefully later, so please be charitable if I've overlooked an important passage. Butler's argument appears to be conflating two questions: 1. Does anyone unfairly profit from war? 2. Is the unfair profit the result of a racket? I think few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "yes", but I don't think he's made a convincing argument that the unfair spoils of war are either necessarily or overwhelmingly the result of a racket. Here I would like to note that the Butler's definition of "racket" is rather loose. The strongest interpretation of his definition, I think, is that a racket is something that is orchestrated covertly by few, for their own benefit, and at the expense of the many. There is another word for this: a conspiracy. The American Heritage Dictionary has what I consider to be a fair definition for conspiracy: "an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act." So to show that war is indeed a racket, Butler would have to demonstrate that one of two things is true: 1. War can only emerge from conspiracy 2. The overwhelming majority of wars have historically emerged from conspiracy Demonstrating a conspiracy in turn is a two-part enterprise: (1) showing the act was illegal, wrongful or subversive, and (2) showing that a group of people agreed to perform it together. As far as I can tell, we are only shown instances of profiteering, and perhaps individual corruption in the form of draft-dodging and whatnot. This is outrageous, to be sure, but falls short of demonstrating that a "racket" is at play. And while I can think of recent examples of wars that do qualify as a racket (at least, IMO), Butler's more general claim that "War is (effectively always) a racket" seems like hyperbole.

angry_albatross 3y ago
You probably meant to say that few people would argue that the answer to #1 is "no"
- omginternets 3y ago
  Whoops. That’s an unfortunate mistake.

Barrin92 3y ago

>A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the 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 very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. Just because people make fortunes from war doesn't mean that this is the essential characteristic of war. People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its cause. War is a historic universal, and in fact it was most intense in pre-modern societies. Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Long before we had organized commercial activity or opportunity for rackets we had warrior cultures. The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology. Far from it elites often even have to reign the flames of war in as populations whip themselves into a frenzy. The fact that war generally benefits few people, or sometimes even nobody at all doesn't imply that the majority of people weren't genuinely enthusiastic about it, although they'll typically deny it later.

graublau 3y ago
Blackrock approves this comment
chrisco255 3y ago
> Aboriginal cultures went to war not just for material reasons, but also for cultural reasons, ritualistic, and religious reasons. Those are always just emotional excuses for gaining more power over resources. If you ignore incentives and take everyone's word at face value, then we're all saints and nary a sin has ever been committed in the name of some righteous cause. Mutual misunderstandings, is all, I suppose. > People make fortunes out of everything regardless of its cause. Author took care to mark the fortunes of companies at peacetime vs war time and noted that fortunes increased by an order of magnitude in some cases, as a result of war. If your net worth or social standing is due to jump one or two orders of magnitude as a result of a war or two, your subconscious mind will find more reasons than are rational to justify and support a war. You'll say it's to save your people. You'll say it's self-defense. You'll say it's necessary and just. You'll ignore any path to peace that might avert such a disaster, in particular if you never have to enter the fox holes yourself. That's the author's point. Rackets aren't always some men conspiring to gain power or money or fame in smoke-filled parlor rooms. Often, they are emergent properties of incentivized systems. > The conspiratorial idea that war is largely driven by shadowy elites doesn't really hold up to anthropology. The only part that is wrong about that statement is the idea of the elites being 'shadowy'. No, they conduct their racket right out in the public eye. This isn't a particularly insightful phenomenon, by the way. Power always follows a power law of distribution. Of course the elites are primarily responsible for war. If the elites are ever against war, it just means that the incentives of the moment are temporarily more favorable for peace. As a blatant example, let's take the American Civil War for example. Well over 90% of white southerners didn't own slaves. So why would they go to war and lay down their life, by the hundreds of thousands, if they stood to gain almost nothing? Most of these kids were raised on subsistence farms and didn't even know how to read. Of course, to those boys it was a cultural cause, defense of their homeland, states rights, yadi yadi. That's what they were sold. But the ones really pulling the strings in that war, were the rich Southern elites, who did in fact own many slaves and stood to lose a great deal over Lincoln's election. Again, this is true of the vast majority of wars and battles in human history. Pick your time and place in history.

sorokod 3y ago

Smedley Butler, previously on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=smedley%20butler&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

TheFreim 3y ago

It's interesting to observe people repeat the "war is racket" line while also supporting wars because "their" side is allegedly the virtuous one (and anyone pointing this out is peddling "propaganda" of "the enemy" in the totally virtuous war).

l33t233372 3y ago
Wars of defense are entirely different in my opinion.
- cubefox 3y ago
  Those are not up for debate, as the US has never been properly attacked, as far as I know. (The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor might be an exception, but that wasn't the US mainland, though the US attack on Japan did involve the Japanese mainland, so this probably doesn't count as a purely defensive war.)
  - juve1996 3y ago
    Are you really going to suggest an attack that killed 2,403 Americans, sunk five U.S. battleships & damaged 4 others ships, and destroyed 188 aircraft, is not a proper attack? because it wasn't on the "mainland?"
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      An attack made with the explicit purpose to prevent the US from putting up a fight as Japan took internationally recognized US territory.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      The point is that the US war against Japan wasn't a purely defensive war.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago

w10-1 3y ago

He came from generations of influential Quaker's (pacifists) but defied his father in signing up for the Spanish-American war before he left school. He lied about his age to be commissioned as an officer. It's no surprise the military didn't meet his idealistic expectations. His awards were probably not legitimate. At the time, his father was the chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee, overseeing the budget of the Marines. E.g., one award was for a spy mission that consisted of taking a train incognito into Mexico. His claims in "War is a racket" were designed to elevate his reputation as a truth-teller and good guy, an unwitting accomplice.

mrguyorama 3y ago
I don't think the world gives the US enough flak for the Spanish-American war. It was an invented war to steal territory. No wonder he became cynical.

major505 3y ago

Smedley Butler, the writer of this book, latter in life claimed he was sought in a facist conspiracy to lead and overthown Franklin Roosevelt and assume power. He claimed to had stayed in the conspiracy long enough to find out the identity of the conspirators (owners of big america monopolies), and denounced their plans to the president.

rektide 3y ago

Shout out to @floydnoel for citing this yesterday in the F-35 Malpractice submission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056584 Very apt then, & what a crazy topic! How the government has payed a ton of money to develop & purchase jets it basically doesnt/can't own operate or repair. Right to repair/upgrade at the highest level. A racket!

Lammy 3y ago

I agree with Butler's point but think he's missing the forest for the trees by focusing on territory acquisition and profits from production of war materials. The real point of war is that it's a way to farm us (the masses) for rapid development of promising new technologies, e.g. — — US Civil war: Rifles, telegraph, railroads — World War 1: Optics, radio communication, aviation, tracked vehicles — World War 2: Computers, cryptography, atomic energy, radar and microwave communication, global logistics (fuels, containerization, etc) — Cold War: SPAAAAACE

rib3ye 3y ago

This has to be the most re-posted piece on HN https://hn.algolia.com/?q=War+Is+a+Racket https://hn.algolia.com/?q=War+Is+a+Racket

leobg 3y ago

There’s also The War Racket by Harry Browne (2004).

jasmer 3y ago

The people driving the wars generally don't profit from the wars, and it's generally not true that the war profiteers have that much influence over spending during war time, rather, they are a bit like doctors during a plague and have huge pricing leverage once a war starts. There are almost zero wars which are profitable even for the antagonist. 'Making needed weapons during war is exceedingly profitable' - yes it is, and often nations are in ruin after the fact, which will lead to profiteering like 'a racket'. And the proceeds will indeed go to very few.

steviedotboston 3y ago

[flagged]

lionelholt 3y ago

Predating that is Ludwell Denny's "We Fight For Oil" from 1928. I have a physical copy of this book. Its mere existence says a lot, and still does ... https://www.yamaguchy.com/library/denny/denny_index.html https://www.yamaguchy.com/library/denny/denny_index.html

RadixDLT 3y ago

no, racket lang is a racket

deleted 3y ago

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ajuc 3y ago

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StanislavPetrov 3y ago
It was the four decades that General Smedley Butler spent fighting wars of aggression on behalf of the United States that led him to write "War is a Racket". At no point in the history of the United States were we "pacifists" - despite the revisionist history of those who choose to ignore our long, bloody history throughout Central and South America before we embarked on our global imperial crusade in 1917. >There would be no Holocaust and millions of lives would be saved if people attacked nazi germany preventively in 1935 as proposed by Piłsudski. There would have been no Holocaust and no Nazi Germany if Woodrow Wilson didn't plunge the United States into the war between crumbling European empires in 1917, and had instead kept the United States out of the war (a message he campaigned on) and forced them to come to an equitable and lasting peace on their own terms. As Ferdinand Foch (The Supreme Allied Commander during WW1) said after Versailles, "This is not a peace, it is an armistice for 20 years". Instead, our interference allowing England and France to put their boot on the throat of Germany, destroying them economically and leading directly to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. >If Ukraine was accepted into NATO in 2008 as Eastern European countries and USA proposed - there would be no 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas and 2022 invasion of whole Ukraine. If NATO didn't insist on expanding after the fall of the Soviet Union (as promised by James Baker and others) and the United States didn't spend billions of dollars to help overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, there would have been no 2014 annexation of Crimea. If the NATO-aligned regime in Ukraine upheld its obligations outlined in the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 treaties, there would have been no invasion of Donbas or Ukraine in 2022. >You cannot solve problems with wishful thinking. This is very true. Nor can you solve problems with delusional thinking. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the United States and NATO have invaded and destroyed Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Syria. We have been bombing countries around the world from Pakistan to Somalia - bombings which continue with little fanfare and practically no attention from the media. The rest of the world (everyone outside of the US, EU and Australia/New Zealand) are well aware of our complete lack of moral and legal authority due to our long and ongoing history of worldwide aggression. The incredibly hypocrisy of pointing the finger at Russia's invasion of Ukraine while our troops right now, today, illegally occupy Syria is only lost on those who are thoroughly propagandized and/or entirely ignorant of the situation. >Pacifism only works if both sides believe in it. The same goes for international law and a "rules based international system". It doesn't work when the unwritten rules don't apply to us, but apply to every country that we consider hostile. The US Congress passed a bill authorizing the invasion of the Hague if any US citizen was ever indicted for war crimes! At the end of the day we can either strive for a peaceful world where every country is held to the same standards for their behavior, or we can have the world we live in where might makes right - we can't have it both ways.

MollyRealized 3y ago

It's worth noting Smedley Butler and the Business Plot [1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot