Some Sunday brunch-time wisdom from Smedley Darlington Butler:

[marmar]

"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.... (and) the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described 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. .....
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.... I must face it and speak out.
... In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

[Pokey Anderson]

1. General Butler -- a remarkable man. My piece on him....

An Unlikely Prophet:

Teddy Roosevelt called him "the finest fighting man in the armed forces." But, General Smedley Butler saved his country AFTER he retired from the military.

by Pokey Anderson


General Smedley Butler was raised a Quaker, and became one of the finest fighting men in the history of the U.S. military. He fought during the time the U.S. was first expanding its military adventures beyond this continent -- 1890s to 1920s. He fought in Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico, China, and elsewhere.

When he retired from the Marine Corps in 1931 at age 50, he was the highest-ranking Marine Corps officer at Brigadier General and one of the most famous Americans in the world. He won two Medals of Honor; no one has ever won three.

Teddy Roosevelt called General Butler "the finest fighting man in the armed forces."

WAR IS A RACKET.
BUTLER'S SIMPLE SOLUTION TO STOP IT IN ITS TRACKS.

After his many gun battles, Butler realized his fighting was to make profits for the war industry, and spoke out. In his book "War Is A Racket," Butler said war is the worst of rackets, and is the only one "in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

To end war profiteering, Butler suggested that all steel makers, munitions workers, bankers etc. get the same pay as fighting soldiers.

"The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation's 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.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!"

After 30 days, said General Smedley Butler, "there will be no war. That will smash the war racket, that and nothing else."


HIS OFT-QUOTED REMARKS ON HIS MILITARY CAREER:

August 21, 1931, Butler spoke to an American Legion convention in New Britain, Connecticut.

Looking back, he reflected on his career. His remarks stunned the audience. Few papers dared report even part of the speech:

"I spent 33 years...being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism....

"I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street....

"In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....I had...a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions....I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents..."

BROKE? TRY AN INVASION

Around 1935, Butler told an audience that Mussolini was invading Ethiopia to get oil because Italy was bankrupt. He said, "The only way out for Mussolini is to declare war on somebody. That's the regular way of dealing with such situations. If this country ever gets busted, you can look for a war in about 6 months."


THE SECRET PLOT

In a little-known story, not only did General Butler fight in wars for his country, but he saved the country from a takeover in 1934 by captains of industry (DuPont and JP Morgan interests) who complained that FDR was "too socialist" or "too communist." They bought a weapons company, Remington Arms, and attempted to persuade Butler to lead a half-a-million-man army to forcibly take the control of the nation from FDR. They said money was no object.

At the time, JP Morgan & Co. was the world's most powerful bank. During the 1920s, Morgan men had routinely represented the U.S. government at international monetary meetings. After the stock market crashed in 1929, an investigation turned up some serious chicanery:

"In May 1933, U.S. Senate Banking Committee counsel Ferdinand Pecora exposed how Morgan reserved shares at reduced prices for certain clients, giving guaranteed profits to former President Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's sitting treasury secretary, the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic national committees, and the CEOs of General Electric, AT&T, and Standard Oil, among others. To curb these abuses, FDR signed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited commercial banks from underwriting securities, and the next year signed the Securities Exchange Act, which created the Securities and Exchange Commission to police Wall Street and prevent stock manipulation. ... J.P. Morgan Jr. reportedly so loathed FDR that his grandchildren were told not to mention the president in his presence and Morgan's servants removed photos of FDR from the morning paper. " ("Rogue Whale" - full citation below)

The plot to remove FDR was begun in late 1933 and early 1934. Through an intermediary, the plotters told General Butler they wanted him to deliver an ultimatum to FDR. FDR would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The new secretary would carry out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans. Butler was chosen because he was so popular with military men. The intermediary assured Butler the cover story would work: "You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…"

General Butler would do no such thing, but he played along long enough to find out who was behind the coup effort, and outed them, later testifying before Congress. The congressional committee failed to call as a witness any of the plotters behind the attempted coup, except for the plotters' front man. They whitewashed the public version of their final report, deleting the names of powerful businessmen whose reputations they sought to protect. The New York Times buried the story in a few paragraphs in back pages, and few Americans were aware of what had happened. Butler, appalled by the cover-up, went on national radio to denounce it, but with little success.

During his retirement, he fought against war and war profiteers as fiercely as he had fought "the enemy" during his time in the Marines. General Smedley Butler faced gunfire 120 times in his military career, but he saved his country after he retired from the military, when he refused to subvert its Constitution.



SOME SOURCES ON THE COUP ATTEMPT, AND SMEDLEY BUTLER

- War is a Racket, by Smedley Butler

- The Attempted Coup Against FDR, by Barbara LaMonica, Probe, from the March-April 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 3) online at http://www.webcom.com/ctka/pr399-fdr.html

- Book: Wall Street and FDR -- Chapter 10: FDR; Man on the White Horse, by Anthony Sutton Online: Book Table of Contents http://www.reformation.org/wall-st-fdr.html
Chapter 10 http://www.reformation.org/wall-st-fdr-ch10.html

- The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer (1973, out-of-print, and rare)

- Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History, by Hans Schmidt (Paperback) Univ Press of KY 1998 reprint

- Against the Beast: An Anti-Imperialist Reader, by John Nichols, for a historic look at America's forays into imperialism, and the efforts to block and reverse those.

- Rogue Whale: Seventy years after FDR, JP Morgan finally got its revenge against banking regulations with its Chase merger. But a new FDR is watching, by Sam Natapoff, The American Prospect, March 1, 2004 online at http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/3/natapoff-s.html

- The Plot To Overthrow FDR, produced by the History Channel http://www.historychannel.com
Approx. 50 min., $24.95, DVD, Catalog Number: AAE-73631; VHS Catalog Number AAE-42344
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=42344&browseCategoryId=&location=&parentcatid=&subcatid=

-The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, $25) - forms the basis for the movie The Corporation, which includes a segment on the attempted coup.


Pokey Anderson is a free-lance researcher. She co-hosts a national and international news and analysis radio show on KPFT (90.1 fm or www.kpft.org) - The Monitor, each Sunday from 6 pm to 7 pm Central Time.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Pokey !

:hi:

[Pokey Anderson]

3. Hi Seems!

I was just reading one of your excellent threads here.

Holding up the sky, as usual, aren't ya?

[proudleftists]

4. The Plot to seize the White House

Is available from Amazon in a new paperback edition !

[seemslikeadream]

5. YES proudleftists

:hi:

[marmar]

6. Thanks for the info.....and welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

7. Thanks for your post. I must save it for future reference, and for sharing. n/t

[CorpGovActivist]

8. Alas, Poor Smedley!

We hardly knew ye: http://www.google.com/search?q=corpgovactivist+smedley&hl=en&filter=0

Nice to see a fellow SDB fan!

: )

- Dave

[BornagainDUer]

9. Smedley Butler was loved by the native populations in the

countries he later realized he had done a disservice to. This guy was a genius as well. His understanding of the political ramifications of our "realpoliticks" is astounding. In China the people built a monument in his honor for trying to right the wrongs of the US empire. He built bridges and roads for the people and helped them in all kinds of projects. In Haiti he was admired by the people and felt that the US lost a big chance to make things right in that country. If this guys plans to better those countries had been carried out the US would be universally admired today.
It's a goddamn crying shame.

Archer's book is well worth the read.