RLM News Show Podcast Blog – September 03, 2013

Buy: War Is A Racket

“My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.”
Smedley Butler

“War is just a racket… I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.”
Smedley Butler

“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.”
Smedley Butler

“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. 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.”
Smedley Butler

“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.”
Smedley Butler

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses.”
Smedley Butler