WAR IS A RACKET - Major General Smedley D. Butler

[Make7]

 

After his retirement General Butler wrote a book WAR IS A RACKET, which begins as follows:

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.

And in a speech delivered in 1933, General Butler said:

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

http://warisaracket.org/semperfi.html

 

[wildbilln864]

1. thanks! nt

[BeFree]

2. I dunno

He Make War sound like it is a conspiracy?

This must be at least the 7th time I've read about Butler on DU. Always nice to see.

[k-robjoe]

3. Albright / Hornberger

"What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/govt/admin/stories/albright120896.htm

"So, the U.S. government supports the brutal dictatorships that oppress their own people, which inspires anger and rage not only against the dictatorship but also against the United States, which the U.S. government then uses as a justification for its support of the dictatorship. How’s that for empire logic? And when that anger and hatred materializes in terrorist retaliation against the United States, U.S. officials then use that to justify the same type of anti-terrorist measures against the American people that are employed in the brutal dictatorships that they’re supporting."

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-02-16.asp

[spooked911]

4. the military machine needed 9/11

so they helped make it happen.

[zappaman]

5. no

they didn't make it happen.
Prove it.

[SDuderstadt]

6. Post Hoc...

Ergo Propter Hoc

[Ezlivin]

7. The military-industrial complex certainly WANTED 9/11

While I may quibble with the "needed" part, I would agree that they needed a suitable reason for continued funding.

After the conclusion of the Cold War, the MIC's raison d'être was threatened and they desperately needed a suitable threat lest their budgets undergo severe peacetime slashing.

9/11 was the motherlode, the windfall of all windfalls. The "War on Terror" has a timeline stretching to infinity, a war that need never end, bringing with it infinite funding.

The answer lies in two words: Cui bono.

[SDuderstadt]

8. Cui bono without...

evidence of culpability means shit.

[Ezlivin]

9. Your opinion is duly noted

N/T

[SDuderstadt]

10. It's not an...

"opinion", dude. It's fact.

[Ezlivin]

11. Your opinion is duly noted

dude.

[SDuderstadt]

12. Your inability to debate is...

not making you look very good, dude.

[whatchamacallit]

15. I think he's holding his own

especially since your notion of debate is "everything I say is fact, everything else is fiction".

[SDuderstadt]

16. Do you honestly believe "cui bono"...

means anything without corroborating evidence of guilt? Can you point to anyone who has been convicted of a crime, simply upon the grounds they might have benefited from it??

[whatchamacallit]

17. Solely? I'm not sure

but you have to admit motive is a major circumstantial factor in any crime.

[SDuderstadt]

18. Not without...

means and opportunity, dude.

[whatchamacallit]

19. Which IMO the government most certainly had. n/t

[SDuderstadt]

20. Then prove it, dude...

It's going on ten years and you still have dick for evidence.

[zappaman]

13. it's not really an opinion

and are you going to present any evidence of your "facts"?

[whatchamacallit]

14. +1 n/t

[apocalypsehow]

22. "needed a suitable reason for continued funding" - Wrong. Let's take a look at some actual data:

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php#gdp-table

In the link above you can see that for the three fiscal years leading up to 9/11, the percentage of GDP that funded the military budget barely changed at all, hovering at or slightly above 3%.

Indeed, the military budget took it's deepest "peacetime slashing" from 1987 to 1998 - when it was nearly cut in half. And it was a bi-partisan effort: when the downward trend in military spending as a part of GDP started, in 1987, Ronald Reagan was president; when it reached 3.1% in 1998, Bill Clinton was in his second term, and we'd had George H.W. Bush (Bush Sr.) in between. It then stayed stable at 3% until Fiscal Year 2002 - when it bumped up to 3.4% of GDP, presumably in the wake of 9/11 and our subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.

That's not very much return on the "military-industrial complex's" investment, if they had indeed planned the 9/11 attacks, wouldn't you say? But, of course, no such thing happened, so the question is entirely rhetorical.

My actual question is this: what took the "military-industrial complex" so long to cook up a 9/11 attack? I mean, the sharpest cuts in the defense budget - nearly in half - started taking place a full fourteen years before 9/11, bottoming out in 1998. Why wasn't there a "false-flag" attack in 1991? Or 1995? Or any of the other years between 1987-1998? That's when the knife was really being wielded to the Defense budget.

And even then (presuming, of course, that the "MIC did it" narrative is operative for the sake of discussion) what did they get in return? A piddly .4% increase in military spending as a part of GDP - .4%!

In point of fact, the data has conclusively shown that the "MIC" budgets were under no threat whatsoever of undergoing any kind of "severe peacetime slashing" - was stable as stable could be for a full three years leading up to the events of 9/11. So much for the "motive" angle of this particular conspiracy theory....

Ah, facts: they are such troublesome things, aren't they?

[Ezlivin]

23. Let's look at total expenditures

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/%7Ejephrean/classweb/United%20States.html

In the link above you can see that defense spending steadily decreased from 1998-2001. (There were insignificant and moderate increases in military expenditures.)

As has been noted countless times before, the Neocons were very interested in increasing our defense spending. The Project for the New American Century, “Statement of Principles,” June 3, 1997, (http://web.archive.org/web/20070810113753/www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm) states:

We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future; we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values; we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad; we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

The stance of the Neocons via PNAC was clarified further when it published in September 2000 a strategy document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses" wherein it proposes "four core missions" for our military forces, one of which was to "transform US forces to exploit the ‘revolution in military affairs.'" The PNAC document continued:

The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.

I suspect that you are aware of PNAC and its machinations so I won't belabor this point.

But after the "catastrophic and catalyzing event" of 9/11, the military budget request rose from $305 billion dollars, to $343.2, then $396.1, then $399.1 and finally it hit $420.7 billion in 2005.

In 2010 it is $685.1 billion, a change of 3% from 2009.

And yet The Heritage Foundation claimed that the 2010 military budget was inadequate!

Without 9/11 there would have been little cause to increase the military budget and the downward trend you noted and I also noted would have continued. The events of 9/11 served to increase the budget allotments.

Compare military spending in 2000 with this year's budget and try again to convince me that 9/11 was not profitable for the military-industrial complex.

[apocalypsehow]

24. This is the old CT'er shuffle, where you shift numbers around, make repeated unsubstantiated

connections between events - "As has been noted countless times before...I suspect that you are aware of PNAC and its machinations so I won't belabor this point...Without 9/11 there would have been little cause to increase the military budget...") - and make blanket statements without the slightest shred of evidence ("Compare military spending in 2000 with this year's budget and try again to convince me that 9/11 was not profitable for the military-industrial complex").

There are, of course, the ubiquitous links, that prove nothing, other that some private organization of individuals somewhere once had an opinion on what the military budget should be.

It's neatly packaged, and smoothly strung together - but it is simply one long editorial, not connected properly to any of the facts it purports to examine.

My post above stands un-refuted.

[OnTheOtherHand]

25. to be fair, why stop in 2002?

Here are the historicals for FY 2011. Pages 58-59 show national defense as a share of GDP at 3.0% in 2000 and 2001, 3.4% in 2002, 3.7% in 2003, 3.9-4.0% in 2004-2007, 4.3% in 2008, 4.6% in 2009, an estimated 4.9% in 2010 and 2011, before being projected to head back down again.

I'm not endorsing the PNAC crap, and I would think that if 9/11 had been tailored to justify the war on Iraq, it would have been... well, you know, tailored to justify the war on Iraq.

[apocalypsehow]

26. My analysis stopped there because the assumption under examination was that 9/11 was ginned up

because, and I quote the poster's assertion above, "after the conclusion of the Cold War, the MIC's raison d'être was threatened and they desperately needed a suitable threat lest their budgets undergo severe peacetime slashing" (all emphases added).

The facts show that military spending as a percentage of GDP began declining in 1986, while the Cold War was still in full swing (it was in 1987 that Reagan gave his famous, semi-bellicose, "tear down this wall" speech, in point of fact, after defense outlays started to decline) and was cut in half over the following decade. Logic would suggest that a "false-flag" attack would take place a hell of a lot earlier than 2001, if the "MIC" was really all that panicky about lost revenue from defense outlays. And it's still not back up to 1986 levels, and is not projected to do so anytime soon by the numbers you provided us in your post (see below) - indeed, it's projected to fall.

Further, the poster stated "9/11 was the motherlode, the windfall of all windfalls". This has been shown to be incorrect, not only in my analysis, that only went up to 2002, but even in the extrapolation of the numbers further out in your demonstration above: 4.9% at it's height ten years after 9/11 is still not back up to 1986 levels of Defense Spending per GDP - and as you concede that percentage is now projected to head back down again.

Some windfall!

I don't buy the notion that the "MIC" had anything to do with 9/11, of course, but my larger point was that even if they did on a pure profit motive basis, they got very little return on their investment, at least to date.

In any event, I appreciate your reply, since it asks a legitimate question (that I hope I've answered) without a resort to personal attacks, premise-shifting, or other diversionary nonsense. Thank you.

[OnTheOtherHand]

27. yes, that post was carelessly drafted

Not to reiterate all your good points, but it's apparent that there was very substantial "peacetime slashing" before 1998, and very little change from 1998 to 2001. I think the other poster actually misread the graph that he thinks shows otherwise.

I must say, however, that if one could prove that "the military-industrial complex" somehow arranged the 9/11 attacks for (let's say) under a billion dollars, and if subsequent increases in military spending largely benefited the MIC, then it seems to me that that would count as quite a healthy return on the investment, regardless of what the levels were back in 1986. (I know that those are big "if"s, and I may well have left one out!)

That isn't to say that the 1986 levels are irrelevant to the broader argument. One really does have to wonder, if the MIC is so powerful, why it allowed that decline to occur. And all this gets us nowhere near actually implicating the MIC in the 9/11 attacks.

Thanks for your posts. It's always nice to encounter arguments that don't punish any attempt to make sense of them.

[Make7]

28. I think there was a typo in the source linked in post #23.

 

Without a significant threat posed by an international power, defense spending steadily decreased from 1998-2001. Moderate increases in military expenditures occured from 1998-2001, but it was nothing significant.


http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~jephrean/classweb/United States.html

Given the chart above this quoted excerpt, the only thing that makes sense to me is that the first range of years was supposed to read 1989-2001.
 

[OnTheOtherHand]

29. oh, that's a good surmise

It doesn't make literal sense even then (a steady decrease and a moderate increase can't happen simultaneously), but it almost makes sense. One could say that defense spending decreased dramatically from 1989 to 2001.

Of course, post 7 indicated that the MIC "desperately needed a suitable threat lest their budgets undergo severe peacetime slashing." Perhaps the poster needs to review the definition of "lest."

[k-robjoe]

21. MSNBC

Long Time Love Affair between MSNBC and America's wars :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5wW49M_kyw&feature=player_embedded