It has been over 80 years since General Smedley Darlington Butler blew the whistle on the true dark motivations of war in his classical treatise: War is a Racket. Butler lays bear the fallacies trumpeted from the halls of the “4th Estate”. Gen Butler reveals that although the American press mouths hollow platitudes of patriotic heroism, the true motive of war is in fact, the endless pursuit of the bottom line; by the few; at the expense of the many. Far from a sensationalist titillator for the purpose of profit, Gen. Butler named names and gave facts and figures. Butler cites: International Nickel, Utah Copper, Central Leather, American Sugar Refining Company and Brown Brothers Harriman as the chief beneficiaries of the “First War to End All Wars.” While Butler lists these corporate vultures as some of the leading special interests of the blood and death of millions in WWI, the most culpable appears to be the infamous J.P. Morgan Jr of the Banking House of Morgan.
It is a widely known fact that Morgan loaned nearly 2.5 billion dollars to BOTH the Allied and Central Powers during the war. The lion share, of which, went to the British. In the aftermath of the war, the British would owe the U.S. a whopping 4.7 Billion dollars. (61 Billion in today’s money) With the exception of US intervention, on the side of the Allies; this spigot of free flowing financing was probably the most significant contributor to Allied victory over the Central Powers. Unsurprisingly, US intervention had the interesting side effect of saving the loans made by Morgan to both sides of the conflict. A motive that many critics have cited as the true reason for America's entry on the side of the Allies. However, Morgan’s opportunism did not stop at mere financing. Giving a new meaning to the phrase in “disaster there is opportunity”,Morgan would later become the sole purchasing agent for the British where he would make some $20,000,000,000 in purchase orders for the British while pocketing an estimated whopping $400,000,000 in commissions for his services. His purchases confirm and exemplify the kind of cronism Gen Butler speaks about since almost all of Morgan’s purchases were from fellow millionaires, colleagues and munitions makers such as Du’pont Chemical, Remington and Winchester Arms. These same forces would later ask Butler to be the front man of a coup to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt because of their contempt for his New Deal Policies. (Click Link below)
If Butler had been the sole anomaly in the line of military whistle-blowers, he could have easily been dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. He was not. In the 1970′s, the Late Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty would once again remind the public of Gen. Butler’s ghastly warning.Though widely known to researchers as a leading voice in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, Prouty often pulled back the curtain and exposed the little man working the massive mind controlling machinery of public opinion; which promoted these military escapades all over the globe on behalf of private corporate interests. Prouty implied that the manichean devil of communism was the rationale for the cold war. According to Col. Prouty, this rationale resulted in a 6 trillion dollar defense industry which sold to both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R's national security structures, as well as, their proxies and client states.
Like Butler, most of Prouty’s information draws not only upon official government records and sources, but on a more than 20-yr active duty service which culminated in his appointment to Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under John F. Kennedy. Col. Prouty projects, and subsequent congressional testimony confirms that between 220 to 550 billion dollars in military expenditures occurred due to US adventures in Vietnam.
Like Butler, most of Prouty’s information draws not only upon official government records and sources, but on a more than 20-yr active duty service which culminated in his appointment to Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under John F. Kennedy. Col. Prouty projects, and subsequent congressional testimony confirms that between 220 to 550 billion dollars in military expenditures occurred due to US adventures in Vietnam.
Prouty cites the example of the development of a of special helicopters that was used in Indo-China. Col Prouty alleges that a bank executive from the Bank of Boston approached him sometime in the early 60′s about the feasibility of these aircraft in the Indo-China theater of war. At that time Col. Prouty informed the man that there was no practical use for the aircraft since there was no active involvement by the U.S. Military in the area at the time. Thanks in no small measure to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, (An adventure where for Former Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara exonerated the Vietcong of blame) the U.S. would be in Vietnam by 1965. And with the Vietnam War, came the demand for the aircraft. Prouty puts the cost of this aircraft at or around $250,000 each. He states that approximately 4,000 of these aircraft were lost in Vietnam. Do the math! That’s 1 billion dollars spent for one brand of aircraft that was never recovered, salvaged or accounted for after the war. While this loss was astronomical to the tax-payer, it was a good war for the manufacturer: Bell Helicopter.
Then of course, there is Air America, the C.I.A. proprietary company that was active in the 1950′s and 60′s. It is estimated that Air America flew over 10,000,000 military personnel, spies, diplomats and government assets into Indo-China. The profit from these flights eclipsed the profit from any commercial airliner in operation during the Vietnam period. Vietnam had the effect of giving the C.I.A and its allies a virtual monopoly in air transport in Indo-China before and during the Vietnam War years. Although the C.I.A. officially denies any connection between itself and Air America. Subsequent investigations from the Church Committee and from private researchers such as Professor Peter Dale Scott have successfully verified the relationship between the C.I.A. and Air America.
Confessions of An Economic Hit Man
As we came to the close of the 20th Century another whistle-blower would again echo Gen Butler’s warning about this nefarious racket that by this time, had a mortality cost of nearly a half billion lives. Author John Perkins spelled out the racket in alarming detail in his book Confessions of An Economic Hitman. Perkins corroborates and states in detail the extent to which huge trans-national corporations identify and covet natural resources for production, distribution and profit. In the process of its private pursuits, these corporations offer world leaders enormous sums of money to exploit these resources for the benefit of a privileged few. Perkins and others like him would apparently walk into the capitol offices of these world leaders and make them an “offer that they couldn't refuse.” Perkins as a “gangster for capitalism," stated that the chain of events would go something like this. A new president would come to power. He or someone like him would walk into their offices with a proposal for financial loans, which the president would take under the guise of development. The loans would inevitably go into default either because of the greed of the country's president, or the onerous clauses of the contract. At this point, the institution that made the loans would demand, as collateral, access to the country's raw materials as payment for the debt. So called austerity programs would commense and as a result, the economic infrastructure of the country would collapse. Mass starvation, vagrancy, and social misery would provoke civil unrest. In this atmosphere, thousands would perish for lack of basic medical treatment that would be routine in any neighborhood clinic in America.
But, if the leader refused the loans, the intelligence community would employ assassination as the precursor of a coup; and hand control of the country over to the most corporate friendly, yet brutal military dictator who would then crush dissent through murder. Should the leader somehow miraculously survive the assassination and the coup, a pretext for war would be drummed up by Defense Department, echoed by the press, and the military would be used to protect the interests the corporate oligarchs. If we examine the consequences of the first two wars of the 21st Century, we find the same modus operandi. A 2013 article published by CNN (Contractors reap $135 billion from Iraq war) states that "at least $138 billion dollars has paid by the U.S. Tax-payer to private contractors that have supplied everything from private security, logistics and reconstruction, to power plants and toilet paper." Chief among these private contractors is KBR, once known as Kellogg Brown and Root. The controversial former subsidiary of Halliburton, which was once run by Former VP-Dick Cheney, was awarded at least $39.5 billion in federal contracts related to the Iraq war over the past 10yrs. In the Afghan theater, it is estimated that at least 410 billion in arms and military services were sold by 100 of the largest munitions makers in the world. With just 10% of those companies selling over $208 billion of that 410 billion, it is clear that the racket continues.
But, if the leader refused the loans, the intelligence community would employ assassination as the precursor of a coup; and hand control of the country over to the most corporate friendly, yet brutal military dictator who would then crush dissent through murder. Should the leader somehow miraculously survive the assassination and the coup, a pretext for war would be drummed up by Defense Department, echoed by the press, and the military would be used to protect the interests the corporate oligarchs. If we examine the consequences of the first two wars of the 21st Century, we find the same modus operandi. A 2013 article published by CNN (Contractors reap $135 billion from Iraq war) states that "at least $138 billion dollars has paid by the U.S. Tax-payer to private contractors that have supplied everything from private security, logistics and reconstruction, to power plants and toilet paper." Chief among these private contractors is KBR, once known as Kellogg Brown and Root. The controversial former subsidiary of Halliburton, which was once run by Former VP-Dick Cheney, was awarded at least $39.5 billion in federal contracts related to the Iraq war over the past 10yrs. In the Afghan theater, it is estimated that at least 410 billion in arms and military services were sold by 100 of the largest munitions makers in the world. With just 10% of those companies selling over $208 billion of that 410 billion, it is clear that the racket continues.
The Ghost of Gen Smedley Darlington Butler haunts the American psyche with a horrifying prophesy created by a nation sustained on a permanent war economy. Endless military interventions, ever-expanding defense budgets, enormous national debt, erosion of civil liberties, massive government surveillance, domestic police corruption,and the centralization of the American economy into the hands of the few, are the externalities of international police actions in the interests of private corporations. Interventions that escalate ethnic border conflicts into full blown cash cows and massive body counts where nothing is settled; only continued. Gen Butler's ominous whisper reminds us of what we have always suspected deep in the darkest resources of our collective imaginations. WAR IS A RACKET!!!! WAR IS A RACKET!!!! WAR IS A RACKET!!!
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