War

THERE IS ALWAYS MONEY FOR WAR

War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare. After he retired from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech “War is a Racket”. The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935.

” 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. 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.”
War is certainly a big business, the biggest and the most profitable business devised at the expense of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts and friends. We (The United States) spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined. We are exceptional in WAR and the proliferation of the WAR MACHINE. What a waste. It is time to bring the EMPIRE home. If we take care of ourselves and try to be more of the shining example that we know that the majority of the people reflect, and truly stand for human rights and not corporations rights, the rest of the world will follow. When we support dictators that are to our financial benefit, but to the detriment and enslavement of the people, we have taken the wrong direction.
War has been an institution since the beginning of time.  We’ve been killing ourselves because we’ve been told someone is our enemy.  For whatever reason we’ve obeyed and fought in your wars, but no more.  War is not a viable option for resolution conflict.  
How many poets, artists, musicians, inventors, humanitarians, carpenters, doctors, sons, daughters, husbands and wives have to die before we say enough is enough.  The problem is the people that start the wars and benefit from these wars are never the ones to die or be maimed or pay a price in any way. It’s always the young, that they get to fight their wars, the idealist, the easy to convince what their doing is the right thing for their country or their religion or their survival.  What a waste of human resources.  If you took all the money, the effort, the time and the resources of war and used all of these for positive goals, What would the world be like today.
At one time most wars were about land or food resources–a matter of survival of the fittest.  Now it seems to be pure greed that drive our leaders into wars.  Now it seems like it is survival of the fattest  Our ” WAR MACHINE ” the military industrial complex that  President Eisenhower warned us about, is everything he said and more. How do we trust these leaders that send our children into war under the guise of patriotism?
I’ll tell you how.  These leaders and merchants of death have to pay the price for their avarice, and their rush to war.  First of all there will be no more privatizing of war. All people involved in war will be a member of the military.  The people washing the dishes and cooking the food and doing the laundry and digging the holes, everything involved with war. Now since our government-is not going to have enough people to fill all of these jobs to keep the military machine operating we’ll have to have a draft. But now when we have a draft we’ll start with the wealthiest countrymen first.  The captains of industry, the bankers, the politicians, the hedge fund managers, all of the people that have the most to gain from war will have their children on the front line.  It will be their children and relatives coming home in body bags, their heirs, their future will be interrupted. Let’s find out just how patriotic the ultra wealthy and our leaders are. Let’s have them put their skin in the game. Let’s find out just how patriotic they are.  Let’s be realistic when someone that we don’t know dies in war we might pay attention and feel sorry for awhile, but if it is your own child that dies for the sake of corporate greed, or patriotism, or religious reasons, that hits home and changes your perspective on life and the value of it.
And now let’s get to the politicians that are either getting us into these wars or approving of them.  Again it’s easy to send other people into war, for whatever reasons, and claim that they are the best of America and be all patriotic about it.  But what would be wrong with the politicians families also being on the front line, and coming home in body bags or crippled physically or mentally.  Would.they still be so patriotic and gung ho and have more of their relatives die for “THE CAUSE”? Would that effect their decision making, one would certainly hope so.  If not maybe this would help convince these deciders of our destinies to avoid war period. Each congressional member could also spend one week per year on the front line.  And I’m sure we would lose a couple now and then, but then maybe their replacement would think twice.  I would rather lose a couple politicians, now and then, then a good carpenter or musician etc. etc..
There is the expression that “If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat our past mistakes.  Well with regard to war, the one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.  We keep fighting and killing ourselves, century after century, believing in our cause, and willing to give our lives for “THE CAUSE.”
No more pre-emptive wars with countries, no more big wars, no more little or undeclared wars. War is War, and WAR is bad for all living things.