Politics

US Foreign Policy is insane. Why do we think bombing every third-world toilet on this planet is going to solve the world’s problems? The recent mess in Libya is another mis-guided venture that will surely have unintended consequences in the future as they always do. In honor of our leader’s stupidity (in both parties), I recommend this classic by Major General Smedley Butler of the USMC. General Butler was a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and was the most decorated Marine ever at the time of his death:

War is a Racket

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 [I] 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.