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US Military: Pawns of the Corporatocracy |
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“Wars”, “police actions”, “just causes,” or whatever title we give them should only be told from the view point of the soldier. The soldier’s duty is “but to do and die” our duty, the soldier’s fellow citizen’s duty, is to ensure that a soldier is never needlessly put in harms way. Spreading the interest of the corporatocracy is a foul and vomitus “reason” to place a soldier in harms way, yet throughout history this is the main use of a soldier. I will let the words of Major General Smedley Butler USMC explain the soldier’s role a little further on.
Every military action has the same elements: the government who sends the troops to battles, the soldiers, war protesters and war supporters. The story for the soldier, the war protesters and war supporters, in all military actions is the same. The “war protesters” want the troops out of harms way due to (in their minds) an ennoble reason for sending the troops into harm’s way. The “war supporters” get upset when “war protesters” demand an end to “the war”, because “it makes the soldier lose faith in the cause.” War supporters get upset when war protesters make claims that “the war” is “not altruistic” because “we have many stories of the soldier’s altruism shining through on the battlefield.” (War supporters often get confused about who needs to be altruistic. Hint: it’s our government who needs to be altruistic. A soldier’s altruism is already established when he/she enlists.)
Soldiers are individual human beings so of course the reality is that their emotions and opinions about the war are going to be as wide and varied as the general public’s opinion. You’d have to be really ignorant to think that anyone would dare to question the altruism of a soldier. The simple fact that a person signs up to become a soldier, war or no war, is an act of altruism. He or she by signing up for military service states loud and clear that they are willing to lay down their life for their country.
What the “war protesters” are protesting in every war is the misuse of these altruistic human beings that have said to the government, “Take my life and use it to help mankind.” Therefore, it is the government’s cause and altruism that is called into question by war protesters, not the soldier’s altruism. The soldier’s duty is to survive and make it out alive. He/she does not “ask or reason why” when the order to “go” comes down they just ensure that they are ready to go.
For the soldier, it doesn’t matter (until after the war) if they are being used for a good or bad cause; their duty is to fight to the best of their ability and ask questions later. The government’s job, and the job of the citizens of the soldier’s country, is to ensure that the soldier’s life is not needlessly placed in harms way. Therefore it is the citizen’s job to question and ask “why” on behalf of the soldier. Those that will not question our government’s rationale for war fail to support the troops. If the government tells the troops to jump off a cliff, will a person who supports the troops cheer them on and tell them to jump as far as they can or does a troop supporter tell the commander-in-chief “you will not send the troops off a cliff on my watch”?
Unfortunately in a capitalistic society which is dependent on acquiring more and more resources to fill an insatiable appetite for mammon, the soldier is often used as a pawn to acquire more resources so rich business people can make more money. Failing to see this, many Americans, especially the Christian Right, blindly support the war instead of thinking that there might be more pressing domestic problems that the troops could help to resolve; problems that do not cost the soldier his/her life. If American’s cared half an ounce about the troops they might stop and question the government’s reason for war and whether or not the soldier’s life is an appropriate price to pay for that reason. As Richard Cheney once said, “And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many” (Connelly).
With all this in mind about “supporting our troops” and our “government for the rich,” let’s take a look back at World War One, but not from the view point of the rich and their “glorious victories” they write about afterward. Let’s take the viewpoint of the soldiers and the masses as pawns in the corporatocracy's game, starting with 1909. Remember that at this time the country is using child labor in factories, and as usual it is only the “liberals” crying foul, proving that not all was as well as the Christian Right would have us believe about these particular “good old days.”
Emma Goldman, a crusader for social justice until her death in 1940, was imprisoned by the US government during World War I for daring to criticize mandatory conscription, and was eventually deported to Russia… Despite her US citizenship, she was banished from the US for having the audacity to question the leaders of the American Empire. With great clarity, she described the Empire of her time [in 1909]:
“The history of American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians. Sturdy sons of America are forced to tramp the country in a fruitless search for bread, and many of her daughters are driven into the street, while thousands of tender children are daily sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites” (Miller 4-5).
Goldman could have been writing about today, nothing has change in the USA.
Next, is my personal favorite because it is an honest message, from an “old war horse,” to those people who support the troops when presidents tell them to jump off a cliff. I cannot reprint his entire document here. To view the entire article, go to: www.warisaracket.org. I will reprint portions here to get a feel for how he felt about the corporatocracy using him and his dead mates for the corporatocracy’s gain. The document is titled “War is a Racket” and was written by Smedley Darlington Butler, Major General, USMC, the most decorated Marine in US history at the time of his death. Butler died the year before the US entered WWII, but he wrote this “piece of his mind” about the run-up to WWII not long before the war began. Butler was a life-long Marine, here are some quick facts about his life: Smedley Darlington Butler, Major General United States Marine Corps. Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881; awarded two congressional medals of honor for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914; and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917. Distinguished service medal: 1919. Retired Oct. 1, 1931. Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932; Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940. This is what General Butler had to say about his military service:
I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps… And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism… I helped make Mexico and 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 money in. I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street… I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for America sugar interests in 1916. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents! (warisaracket.org).
Here is a piece of Major General Butler’s mind from a short “book” he wrote:
Chapter One: 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.
In the World War [WWI] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This 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.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out…
…a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends. But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation? Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.CHAPTER TWO: WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?...
…The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.
Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year. Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000. A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company – and you can't have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.
But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!...
…Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent (Butler 1-11).
Butler goes on and on with a list of profiteers during World War One while his butt was on the line with all the other soldiers. His list draws to a close and he adds up the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.CHAPTER THREE: WHO PAYS THE BILLS?
Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone…
…But don't forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.
Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said, "All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them." So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.
In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.
So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed…
…Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month…Half of that wage…was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.
Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. (Butler 12-19).CHAPTER FOUR: HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!
WELL, it's a racket, all right.
A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get…
…Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying…
…A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.
At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power… Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only…
..To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE: TO HELL WITH WAR!
(www.warisaracket.org).
General Butler is the same General Butler that the corporatocracy tried to use to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt's Presidency in 1934. (See Coup of 1934.)
Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WWII, didn’t think about the greater cause of “Liberating Europe” when he was heroically fighting. He said all he kept thinking was that maybe if he kills this next German it will be the last one and then he can go home.
…there are a lot of things that can make a man brave. Wanting to go back to Texas, lack of sleep, anger, disgust, discomfort and hate — those things won me my medals, and they’ve won many other medals for many other guys.
I won’t be sent into combat again unless I request it. And I won’t. I’m not a fighting man. From here on, I want to like everybody. Audie Murphy: July, 1945 (Audiemurphy.com).
Soldiers do not question the cause or the morality of a war; they are busy trying to stay alive and keep their buddies alive. They’ll worry about their conscience when they have finished the task at hand. It is up to the people that send them to war that must question the cause and the morality of a war in order to truly "support the troops”. Don't let the corporatocracy send our citifellowzens (the troops) into wars designed to make the rich owners of the corporations richer at the expense of a soldier's life.
"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service" -Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (warisaracket.org).
References:
Connelly, Joel. In the Northwest: Bush – Cheney Flip-Flops Cost America in Blood. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 29 Sept. 2004 <http://seattlepi.nwsource.com /connelly/192828_joel29.html>.
Miller, Jason. Redemption Within Reach for the American Empire. 18 Aug. 2005 <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9849.htm>.
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