80 Years Ago A Marine Major General Explained The Ugliest Truth About War

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/excerpt-from-marines-speech-proves-little-has-changed-in-80-years-2013-7



Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler would be 132 years old today, were he still alive.
He was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, for his heroism during several combat tours in Central America. He took part in World War I, the Banana Wars, and the Boxer rebellion in China.

Consequently he became quite the anti-war activist in his older age. He even put a stop to a real-life potential military coup against F.D.R.

If Butler were around today, engagements like Iraq would have him simply astounded.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/excerpt-from-marines-speech-proves-little-has-changed-in-80-years-2013-7#ixzz2b0QfcN00

[cantbeserious]

1. Forgotten And Never Taught American History

eom

[reusrename]

10. My feelings exactly.

How can this guy be left out of the history books? I never learned of him in school.


I tell young people stories of him all the time and they are always very excited to tell me all about what they learned when they later googled him. I guess even the kids who aren't academics like to read about real heroes.

[zeemike]

21. It's simple, he committed the unthinkable crime.

He told on their criminal behavior.
He should be taught in every history class...and given all the honers of a real hero...which he was.

[Enthusiast]

30. It's unforgivable!

Telling the truth.

[Brigid]

31. They are hungry for the truth.

They instinctively know they are rarely told it.

[Octafish]

2. Hero who's now replaced with zeroes.

When money trumps peace, the more zeroes, the better.

[Graybeard]

3. "War Is A Racket"

Smedley Butler's 1935 book is just as relevant today.

Also reading about a possible 1933 'Business Plot'
to overthrow FDR in a coup is chilling.

A true American hero.

[malthaussen]

4. Happy birthday, Smedley

Wish we had a few like you today.

-- Mal

[OldEurope]

5. In 1933 he probably did not know much about Nazi-Germany.

I'm not sure if Europe had managed to get rid of Hitler without help from America. So I'd like to add one other good reason for a war: stop the killing of innocents, as you did in WW II.

[90-percent]

7. Interesting

American history prior to WW2 is interesting because most Americans were very isolationist and didn't want to get tangled into foreign wars. And there were some prominent Americans that liked what the Nazi's were up to prior to Germany's invasions. Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and Prescott Bush in particular.

It would have been very interesting if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor. That clinched it for American involvement. Germany declared war on the USA perhaps 2 days after Pearl Harbor?

America lost 400,000 in WW2. Europe and Russia had staggering death tolls well into the millions.

War Profiteers were PROSECUTED during and after WW2. Nowadays those same types would be awarded no bid contracts for companies formerly run by Dick Cheney, one of the most prolific war profiteers of the last half century.

-90% Jimmy

[Enthusiast]

32. The war profiteers should have been nailed during the Iraq War.

Evil Dick.

[90-percent]

38. I'm an average DU reader/poster with average critical thinking skills

The GW Propaganda campaign against Iraq I knew was bogus from the start. I thought it would have been a badda-bing badda-boom type of war Daddy Bush conducted with a small loss of American life. I could not foresee the clusterfuck quagmire it became over the next decade.

I also remember all the propaganda whipping frightened Americans into a frenzy of revenge against the 9-11 perps of Saddam's Iraq. One hell of an infuriating big lie. The silencing, high tech lynching and marginalizing of dissenting voices creeped me out, also.

An interesting observation is that there were so many inside the DC bubble that I generally respect fell for the whole thing hook line and sinker. If an average guy like me can see through the bullshit, then those we got running our country, which should be people of exceptional capabilities and character, should have also had the means to reach the same conclusion I did.

Keep in mind the biggest anti-war protests in the history of the planet was before the 21st century Iraq invasion. Europe was protesting all over the place.

-90% Jimmy

[Enthusiast]

39. Iraq was a huge disappointment.

Mostly because of the complicit media and the blatantly dishonest Dubya maladministration. The mistake of Iraq is hardly acknowledged today. Sickening. Infuriating, yes.

[NuclearDem]

9. I'm sorry, but WWII was not fought to stop the Holocaust.

Americans didn't even know about it until the camps were liberated. If the plight of German Jews was even remotely a consideration, the Allies wouldn't have turned away so much Jewish refugees beforehand.

It was a response to Axis aggression, not a crusade against genocide.

[sulphurdunn]

12. No nation in the history of the world

ever went to war to stop the killing of innocents. Wars are fought over resources, either to steal them or defend them.

[RVN VET]

18. Exactly

If Rwanda had been sitting on an ocean of oil, Clinton would have sent in the marines -- and the army, air force, delta force, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

If Bosnia had been sitting on oil, there would have been no "ethnic cleansing" problem, because we -- and NATO -- would have moved in as soon as the first shots were fired.

Had Cambodia been oil-rich (or just minerals rich) we would have moved in -- even with the grumblings and protests against the Vietnam war still heard in the streets of D.C., around the Pentagon, etc.

The simple fact -- ugly and sad, perhaps -- is that this wonderful "Christian" nation could give a fart for the deaths of innocent people, the massacre of inconvenient peasants. In fact, as we are gradually coming to know, this "Christian" nation has never -- never -- balked at perpetrating atrocities and civilian mega-deaths, itself.

General Butler, if i was worthy of offering you the gesture, I'd salute you. I certainly honor your memory.

[John2]

24. Yep, even our

own Civil War, started out to just save the Union. Radical Abolitionist like John Brown was considered a mad man.

[JackRiddler]

36. The US and France both intervened in Rwanda.

It is a myth that the West did nothing. The reality is that the West was deeply involved in creating the conflict in the first place.

[valerief]

16. Amazing people still believe US involvement in WWII was to "save lives". Amazing. nt

[JackRiddler]

37. I don't think people believe this, exactly.

They've learned to parrot it unthinkingly since they were babies.

Kind of like the newer one that the West "did nothing" during the Rwandan massacre. (Absolute bollocks: US and France first armed and trained the sides in the Rwandan conflict for years beforehand; France intervened with troops on the ground to protect the Interahamwe forces!)

The memes of humanitarian imperialism.

[OldEurope]

40. Americans surely saved the lives of my family and others.

I am a boomer but my parents and grandparents as well as my in-laws coud tell you many things about that. And they love America for this and consider you as our friends.
So do I.

Except perhaps for some.

[JackRiddler]

43. I'm very glad about that, however...

This was not why the US entered the war. The US entered the war after being attacked.

[John2]

20. Stop the killing of

innocents is very interesting, the way you put it considering the entire history of the World. You think this Country went to War to stop the killing of innocents?
FDR wanted to get in that War on the side of the British Empire and France, but we don't have a King. I think FDR also was Jewish.

Our history is not clean and neither is Britain or France from Human Rights Abuses. I'm not excusing Hitler but he is a product of his environment. He believed in his superiority and the superiority of his race. If you look at the United States, at the time, it had a lot of racists and many parts of it was still segregated. I don't know why people keep ignoring America's Bloody Civil War and the push out West, in the name of Manifest Destiny? Don't let me start with the British Empire either. Just reminded me, I just got through reading about the life of General George Armstrong Custer.

Man is Man. The only reason we nuked Japan is because we got the weapon first and was the only nation had it. Now we are trying to get others from getting it because some madman might use it, even though a certain rightwing President in the U.S. claimed that we can win a limited Nuclear War.

I'm going to use some profiling here. Hitler was a typical rightwing supremacist who thought his race was superior and deserved to rule. Name just one rightwing fanatic in this world's entire written History didn't think so, including today? When they start talking about supremacist ideas, then you know they are dangerous. So who is speaking that lanuage today?

[Enthusiast]

34. You are right!

Right wing MFers today are just as crazy and bloodthirsty as Hitler was then.

[JackRiddler]

25. The US entered WWII after being attacked.

It had nothing to do with saving innocents.

The US did not start WWII, it was attacked and engaged in self-defense. Thus the idea that WWII shows "a good reason for war" is absurd. Germany and Japan started that war. They were the ones who had reasons for war, and as always, these were very bad reasons.

[OldEurope]

41. Please see upthread, my post # 16

Many Germans were very happy to be occupied by America for some years.

[JHB]

6. Oh, I don't think he'd be astounded at all by Iraq...

...it's precisely the sort of war his speeches were against.

[Brigid]

8. He'd be astounded that we still haven't learned the truth . . .

Even after all this time.

[Arctic Dave]

11. K&R

[ConcernedCanuk]

13. No one seems to realize why the USA got involved.

.
.
.

what was one of the first things that the USA did once Hitler was defeated?

ponder it a moment . . .

I'll be back

CC

[ConcernedCanuk]

15. Hitler died April 20, 1945

.
.
.

USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Tuesday, Aug. 6 and Friday, Aug. 9, 1945.

USA had "encouraged" German scientists to finish the Atom bomb on US soil.

They had heard of Germany's proficiency at developing weapons,

USA wanted that knowledge, and they got it.

And used it on innocent civilians in Japan.

Figure it out.

CC

[bobclark86]

23. Trinity was in July...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)

The Manhattan Project didn't take 3 months. It took 3 years. The Germans had NOTHING to do with it, other than some Jewish guy who left the country 12 years earlier.

Try again. There's plenty of other reasons for the war.

[ConcernedCanuk]

28. Trying again . . .

.
.
.

"The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear energy project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and documents, and rounded up German scientists."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

Carry on - be advised - I don't try to convince people to be reasonable after one or two polite disagreements,

I just will not respond, I don't get into long arguments. My father was in that war, he told me stuff.

read the thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

CC

[mountain grammy]

14. Well, thanks to "free trade" and "free markets,"

Fox news, and "good teevee Christians," the capitalists have managed to sell their corporate propaganda to a large number of American voters. Of course, first Americans had to be fat and comfortable and taught to fear their neighbors just enough to vote against their own interests.

This man was a true American hero. I learned about him from my Mom, who served in the Marines during WWII.

[Cooley Hurd]

17. Kick and Rec for one of the Greatest Americans EVER.

[RVN VET]

19. His image should be carved on the side of mountain

and his words made part of every American child's history lessons.

[heaven05]

22. A

real one. None such now. sad.

[JackRiddler]

26. Bradley Manning.

[heaven05]

27. ahhhh

yep. no doubt.

[DirkGently]

29. Wow. I'd trade every general we have for a military thinker like THIS today.

[JackRiddler]

35. I'd trade every general we have for a bucket of warm spit.

[Egalitarian Thug]

33. One of America's few truly great heroes. K&R

His book is definitely worth the read as well.

[WillyT]

42. K & R !!!

[snot]

44. K&R'd.

Another whistleblower.

[Hekate]

45. It was a friend in the Vets for Peace who told me about Gen. Smedley Butler, the attempted coup...

... and War is a Racket. I paid attention in my US History classes, and folks, I had never heard any of this until the Bush Jr. administration when I got to know Lane...

[johnnyreb]

46. video re-enactment

[RudynJack]

47. He was an amazing man.

He will always be remembered.