Smedley Butler is one of the most famous Marine generals. His record speaks for itself, and it's very impressive.

But I would respectfully disagree with him on the idea that war is a preventable "racket."

To me, war and fighting are inseparable parts of the human condition. They are adjuncts to our identity as sentient primates. We cannot escape war. We cannot avoid conflict.

War has been with mankind from the very, very beginning. From the savannahs of East Africa 500,000 years ago, until now.

Organized warfare is one of the organizing principles of every society. Without the ability to wage war, no state exists.

War can be managed and controlled and limited, but never eliminated. Gen. Butler should have known better than to say otherwise.

In the entire recorded history of the human race, there has not been one generation that has not been affected by wars.

Primitive tribes bludgeon each other with clubs, and shoot each other with arrows. Advanced societies hurl missiles, bombs, and napalm at each other.

And now, if I may quote Megadeth in a modified form:

Peace may sell...but who's buying?

.

(12-01-2015 10:51 PM)Mr. Brightside Wrote:  What good is money when most of the world is dead, there is no new media, and the golf-courses are closed because of nuclear winter.
Get a grip, gents.

We could debate the politics of those who relentlessly promoted the notion of 'nuclear winter'.
Yet for now, do note that we're already in WW3 & nukes aren't in use.
Merely proxies, small scale military contingents & guerrilla factions.

Yes indeed, there is no point in being a control freak if you have no one to control when it's all said & done.
So while war is often a racket, it's also greatly to do with control.

(12-08-2015 03:13 AM)CynicalContrarian Wrote:  

(12-01-2015 10:51 PM)Mr. Brightside Wrote:  What good is money when most of the world is dead, there is no new media, and the golf-courses are closed because of nuclear winter.
Get a grip, gents.

We could debate the politics of those who relentlessly promoted the notion of 'nuclear winter'.
Yet for now, do note that we're already in WW3 & nukes aren't in use.
Merely proxies, small scale military contingents & guerrilla factions.

Yes indeed, there is no point in being a control freak if you have no one to control when it's all said & done.
So while war is often a racket, it's also greatly to do with control.

How are we in WWIII, exactly? Because you said so just now? This is a pretty lovely and peaceful World War compared to the previous two, if that's the case.

We're not. But we have been engaged in an active cold war since at least 2012, when the US decided to overthrow a Russian backed government in Syria by arming "moderate Syrian rebels" tied with Al-Queada and the Russians responded in kind by arming said syrian government.

For years the Russians have also been funding opposition to the US in Afghanistan, while the US has been desperately courting Iran to make sure they don't ally with Putin(ever wonder why Obama was so eager to sign onto a shitty deal?).....among dozens of other incidents such as Ukraine, Libya, border-related potshots fired both ways....you name it.

^^ Powerful governments have been practicing conflict by proxy for the entirety of human civilization. There will always be conflicts over regional influence, and they're almost always contained to the region.

2 pages into this thread and no one's asked Roosh the obvious question:

Compared to what?

What's the normal rate of millionaire-and-billionaire creation? Unless you have a baseline, stating that "Look at how many of these people appeared" means nothing. So, what's the baseline? Once we know that, are there any other periods with a high millionaire to billionaire creation that didn't include war? Why was that?

I do not believe that General Butler was suggesting that war be eliminated. He was against U.S. imperialistic policy. He favored the defense the U.S. coastlines from external aggressors and provide for the common defense as a literal interpretation of the constitution.

He attempted to focus the public consciousness more on the geo-political factors that motivated war and their consequences. He was one of the first modern day generals to bring forth the notion economic factors in relation military doctrine.

War is the exchange of bodies for land at a base level. It becomes an issue of what another (individual, group, country) desires on the land because what they (currently) have is not sufficient (physically, mentally, emotionally). Perhaps it is the land itself (strategically), the crops, the water, the oil, the castle, human capital, the desire for more, ad. infinitum.

Butler proposed that the only way to actually prevent (modern imperialistic) war is take the profits out of war. Because his brothers in arms were (are) being killed by bullets and bombs (provided and produced) by the ´side´ on which he was fighting.

If we look at a generation as the totality of mankind, then mankind has always been at war; however, if we look at the totality of mankind in any one generation and view the segments of humanity across time we can see that man has existed without war. It is not a question of avoiding all conflict. I would suggest the examination of these segments and apply them to the present.

As an endeavor modern warfare makes almost all other efforts in human history pale in comparison. I am extra-ordinarily proud and deeply ashamed at the same time.

I have not read Major General Butler's book, although I have a good idea about its contents after reading the comments here.

The discussion about war being a racket has been around for a while. The historians Charles and Mary Beard talked about this in the context of World War I. We can be trace this back even further, to the Declaration of Independence and the American founding. Several state constitutions talked about the "fear of standing armies." (and they got this from the radical Whig tradition in England). By having a standing army, they argued, you created a military caste (like in Prussia and Meiji Japan) that has an incentive to wage war frequently. You move beyond wars of necessity to wars of choice.

A recent example of a war of necessity: Afghanistan.
A recent example of a war of necessity: Iraq.
(see Richard Haas's book on this if you want to delve into this distinction further).

I think it was Eisenhower coined the term Military-Industrial Complex in his 1961 Farewell Address. Harold Lasswell's pathbreaking article "The Garrison State" published in 1941 is also important.

There were also a number of books published on this during the Vietnam War. Two examples: Richard F. Kaufman, The War Profiteers, and Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism.

And the war in Iraq has brought this issue back to the forefront. See, for example, Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.

The libertarians have written a fair amount on this too, although I can't remember the books off the top of my head. If anybody is interested, let me know and I'll dig up the names.

For a detailed history on militarism, see Alfred Vagts book with the same title (warning: it is long and dense but it if you can get through it you would have learned a ton of stuff).

Correction: Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity.

(02-01-2016 11:59 AM)John Quincy Wrote:  Correction: Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity.

Please tell me which US war was a war of necessity?

Is it true that without petrodollars for oil in place the American economy will be in tatters? Thus the elimination of Saddam and Ghaddafi because the threatened the hegemony of the American dollar.

Not sure about Afghanistan. Is it more about heroin?

(06-17-2017 02:43 AM)Stanfield Wrote:  Is it true that without petrodollars for oil in place the American economy will be in tatters? Thus the elimination of Saddam and Ghaddafi because the threatened the hegemony of the American dollar.

Not sure about Afghanistan. Is it more about heroin?

Yes, there is a strong heroin angle to the Afghanistan war, as was the case in Vietnam (Golden Triangle):

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-spoils-...n-trade/91

There is also the "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski geopolitical play, Afghanistan being strategically pivotal. As in Syria, there are also pipelines, it's a major hub. Add to all of this mineral wealth (gold, copper, lithium, uranium, iron ore, cobalt, natural gas and oil.)

James Corbett on Butler:





Short segment from the documentary "The Corporation" about Butler and
the global oligarchy:

/thread-63328...pid1594142

I titled this thread "War Profiteering" because I searched and found nothing to that tune..

Maybe it warrants a Master Thread in addition to one General's testimony on the same subject.

I believe what Butler talked about regarding Business Plot. I can't fully dismiss the idea that he was approached to do coup where they would install pro-Nazi government. According to some stories it would be MacArthur who would become the first American Fuhrer, but that doesn't matter. He didn't want to do it.

(06-19-2017 11:09 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  I believe what Butler talked about regarding Business Plot. I can't fully dismiss the idea that he was approached to do coup where they would install pro-Nazi government. According to some stories it would be MacArthur who would become the first American Fuhrer, but that doesn't matter. He didn't want to do it.

That doesn't make sense. I've never heard it this way before. From what I've read the Third Reich was attempting to secure German sovereignty, reclaiming lands lost previously to Germany by the unfair treaty of Versailles. Not to be a troll, but the lolocaust is easily refutable with simple math. Most of the deaths occurred from malnutrition, starvation, and lack of resources when the Allies bombed the railways that delivered supplies into the camp. On the other side of the pond, America was just used as mob enforcers by central banking once again to stop another country from attaining its own sovereignty.

Butler is right though about war. It never changes.

I recently saw this video of H. Rap Brown. He was with SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). Pay attention to what he says from the 2 min mark to the 5 minute mark.