> Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.
Had those young men simply decided to do nothing rather than join, the world would have been a better place.
I'd be curious to know Butler's take on WWII (he died in 1940). That's the one that people seem most hung up on. It's the only war in living memory considered near universally "good" by those in the US. It's the war that's invoked by every administration trying to stir up popular support for a military adventure in a country most voters can't place on a map.
I'm doubtful our current reverence for WWII will stand the test of time. Long after Hitler has been replaced by the next boogeyman, history students of the future will scratch their heads at what could have possibly motivated a young man to volunteer for such a fool's errand.
>Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.
US won big in that war. WWI nearly bankrupted the British Empire, guess who it was loaning money from? (Hint: it's the US[1]). The only finally paid it off in 2015.
WWI turned the US into a world power, and marked the end of many (other) Empires.
As for the European powers, the war made a lot of sense before it started, as a lot of money was spent on making the shiny toys that killed so many people. Maybe not to the citizens of the countries that took part in the war, but surely to the profiteers.
Finally, one can argue that the war made sense for Germany in the long run, in spite of all the losses. Before the war, Germany was surrounded by Empires: the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman ones. Germany was allied with some of them, threatened by others, but the history shows how fickle the alliances were.
Fast-forward to today, and Germany is still there, while the Empires are gone. WW1 effectively took down the Russian Empire, and was the beginning of the end of the British one (to say nothing of the others).
I am being facetious here, but if the goal of WW1 was to establish a more friendly Europe for German ambitions, then that goal was eventually accomplished.
That's to say, the war made sense for Germany because it was surrounded by states that stood to lose more (if you ignore human life).
Of course, this argument doesn't make sense if you care about people to the slightest extent. But the people who start the wars rarely do.
Also, world war 1 was revolutionary in terms of politics.
The many countries (sometimes newly established after the fall of an empire like austrian-hungary or russia) suddenly found themselves with a completely new political system.
The november revolution in germany resulted in the abolishment of the monarchy and firmly entreched social-democrats inside the political spectrum. It also shows us why having a young democracy without a strong sense of institutional-ism and tradition is incredible fragile.
The whole “white feather” campaign during WWI (women would hand unenlisted young men a “white feather” which was understood to represent cowardice and shame men into enlisting) really contrasts with the unemployment that British soldiers faced after the war: “no former servicemen need apply” was a common warning on shops in the early 20’s. They were treated like garbage before the war, during the war, and after it, too.
WW1 and 2 were the same conflict. The apparent stupidity of WW1 is really a function of how accustomed we are to modern industry, communications, and some of the things hard-won by that conflict.
End of the day, it was all about resources, and is no different than today’s conflicts, which boil down to oil on the supply and the control of money on the demand side.
Except now Iran shoots missiles at a US base in Iraq and the price of oil barely budged. Times have changed, and the US is much more energy independent. And over the next decade even more so as the EV revolution and renewable energy continue to dominate.
IMO the increasing irrelevance of the Middle East will continue to increase world peace and prosperity, at the expense of some truly awful regimes which will crumble.
>Had those young men simply decided to do nothing rather than join, the world would have been a better place.
I am not so sure. I think the main reason that decolonization happened is that a whole generation of young men were lost and Europe was too exhausted and poor from the two world wars to keep its colonies.
Without WWI, there would not have been WWII which would have left the European nations as the premier powers in the world who would have held on to their colonies in Asia and Africa.
So without WWI, there would still be a pretty high chance that India would still be a British colony.
Europe may have been a better place, but probably not the rest of the world.
> Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.
We get to look back with hind sight and only remember negative consequences from positive actions. The US entered WW1 after Germany began unrestricted submarine ware fare for the second time, and coming on the heels of the Zimmerman telegram. France and Belgium were invaded by hostile power. Germany feared Russian modernization and fear of not being able to Compete with France and Russia. Russia sided with the Serbs. France Sided with Russia whose alliance it has sought to counteract the power of a newly unified Germany which had defeated France in 1871 taken territory and imposed a large reparation payment. Austria an absolute monarchy wanted to quite serb nationalism.
WWII was the last time modern industrialized nations were openly at war with each other. The nuclear bomb changed everything. That's one reason WWII is regarded differently than anything that has come since.
Hitler's extermination of the Jews will have him as a historical villain for a long, long time.
The stupid thing about WWII is the whole thing was could have been avoided by people being reasonable with the Treaty of Versailles. The deal they signed effectively putting Germany into debt bondage made something going pear shaped pretty much inevitable, as predicted quite clearly by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Of course by the time Hitler had tanks rolling it was too late to sort things peacefully. Thankfully they learned the lesson and were economically easy going on Germany and Japan after WWII but it was a darn expensive lesson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_t...
The other thing that happened was the Weimar Republic under Heinrich Bruning responded to the onset of the great depression with austerity measures. Just like the US did with similar results; deflation, industrial collapse, massive unemployment, and civil unrest.
The difference was the US got FDR instead of Hitler.
Modern Economists hate talking about this and have managed to drop it down the memory hole.
It depends how you measure it as there were worse people in the same era as Hitler. If I recall the stats correctly it is a much better bet to be led by someone like Hitler over Stalin or Mao.
The ethnically targeted nature of the holocaust is the main claim to 'worst of the worst' status, but honestly it isn't obvious to me that a dead Jew is more horrific than a dead anyone else. They are both pretty bad.
So WWII as being necessary to stop Hitler, I can see withstanding the test of time.
The things that caused WWII, Hitler's rise to power, and the systems that enabled and, frankly, bent him and the Nazis towards the evils they committed, I think we were culpable for, for how Germany was positioned on the world stage post WWI. Germany was ripe for a demagogue, and people needed the sense of security mindlessly following one provides.
This is the kind of whitewashing bullshit proliferating in the west that drives me mad.
Hitler wasn’t the fruit of Great Depression suffering. Most of the world was suffering the consequences of the Great Depression. Hell, many countries had autocrat leaders at the same time. None have committed anywhere near the level of atrocity that Hitler has.
Because Hitler was a product of German people’s fanatical antisemitism and anti-slavism. The roots of which reach back long before World War I.
Bismarck was famous for and boastful of his antipolonism and often called Poles “animals”, “wolves” etc. And he’s thought of as that “progressive” father of modern Germany.
With a dad like that it’s hardly a wonder that the kid turned out to be shitty.
Well, as the entirety of my people were saved from extinction, I for one am glad that some "fools" decided to risk their lives to end what was otherwise a very effective genocide.
As it stands, a third of us were murdered by the "Third Reich", and our numbers have still not recovered.
> Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die... They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure.
Told by whom? Oh that's right, the news media. People really need to go look into why the NYTimes, WashingtonPost, Pulitzer's properties, Hearst's properties, etc were created and how their yellow journalism played into wars even to this day.
Also keep in mind, the biggest ( proportionally ) benefactor of war isn't defense contractors, it's the news industry.
People forgot that WashingtonPost went bankrupt in the first half of the 1900s and the news industry was in danger of collapse. What saved the industry? War.
Keep in mind that the news industry, especially the NYTimes ( a company created by a banker ) editorial board, attacked Butler as a "hoaxer" ( aka conspiracy peddler ). How times change, but the propaganda remains the same.
> Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective.
WW1 makes total sense. By WW1, the entire world had been conquered by European powers and America. Every piece of land on earth was under European/American control or influence. So european powers had no one left to fight but themselves.
> Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.
Europe was in ruins and more importantly fractured. Go read TS Eliot's The Waste Land. It's partly about his angst of over a broken europe and the collapse of western civilization and the ultimate pointlessness of that war.
> It's the only war in living memory considered near universally "good" by those in the US.
It's considered good because propaganda tells us it's good. Propaganda tells us its good because we came out on top. But I don't see how a war with nukes and upwards of 120 million dead could be considered good. That's more dead than the worst pandemic in recent history - spanish flu which killed upwards of 100 million. I doubt anyone would say the spanish flu was "good".
> I'm doubtful our current reverence for WWII will stand the test of time.
Reverence of ww2 will be determined by who is in power. History, as all other propaganda, is written by those in power.
> Reverence of ww2 will be determined by who is in power. History, as all other propaganda, is written by those in power.
I think this occurs within some time frame of the event, and even then only among the better known, funded and "court approved" historians. There will be outcast historians that plug away at recording various facts surrounding the event (e.g., continued investigation into whether FDR was intentionally bellicose, was it truly necessary to nuke Japan, was fire bombing the German civilians tactically useful, etc.).
WWII had a compulsory draft where it was already established by then that congress had the power to initiate a draft. It was also hashed out that it was a federal issue and not a state one.
Which we all know is hot garbage. The government quite literally says, your individual freedoms are not greater than our goal for the country. If you ask me, that sounds NO different than communism! But when you fight for uncle sam, it must mean "the greater good" is good, just because the "greater good" isn't commie red "greater good."
I know it is not a popular view but I think WWII was a major mistake. We could of course not have stopped Hitler's initial actions, but it was the West's choice to wage war against Hitler. I think that was a mistake.
The rational was to keep Poland and the Czech republic free. However at the end of the war neither country was free. They had fallen under the Soviet sphere of influence. The goals they set hence failed.
They KNEW Hitler planned to attack Russia. He had spoken for years about that. That meant they would go through Poland. The sneaky but rational solution would have been to sacrifice Poland temporary and let Hitler attack Russia. Russia and Germany would have worn each other out.
At the end a heavily built up allied military could have marched in and cleaned up.
Note that while this wasn't widely known in the West at the time and therefore cannot be their justification for going to war against Hitler, Nazi Germany's "Generalplan Ost" [0] (their "General Plan for the East", a plan of global genocide so vast it defies belief) called for the almost total extermination of the populations of most Slavic countries, Russia and Poland included. If I remember correctly, the quota for Poland was 80% Poles -- and note I say Poles, not Jewish Poles -- to be exterminated.
So on the one hand, Cold War Poland ended up a puppet of the Soviets. Repression of dissidents, etc. But the Poles were alive. On the other hand, had Nazi Germany won and completed their plan there would be no Poles left to complain about their lack of freedom.
> We could of course not have stopped Hitler's initial actions
Germany was not ready to fight a war in 1937, 1938, or even 1939, when it actually invaded Poland. Had the West actually responded to German aggression with a land assault, even as late as the actual invasion of Poland, then it's rather likely that the war could have been cleaned up before the Soviet Union would have invaded Poland.
Furthermore, an appropriate Western response to actually supporting the Central European states would probably have given the USSR pause before invading, as it would have demonstrated that the defensive treaties were not mere pieces of paper.
You might find Garet Garrett's writings against World War II interesting [1]. He was not a socialist (he was an ardent anti-communist), which makes his conservative arguments against joining all the more interesting.
History doesn't tolerate what-ifs, but just in case. Soviet Union wouldn't stand war with Germany without Allies. Hitler would get access to all the Soviet's resources: cheap slaves' workforce, food, oil, coal, steel, Arctic and Far East seaports. Then attack on the US together with Japan, both East and West coast. The US would not have a chance. Game over.
> Had those young men simply decided to do nothing rather than join, the world would have been a better place.
Words cannot express how disappointed I am with people who say things like this.
Assuming you believe that your country's political system is not worth overthrowing, then serving your country is an honorable act, and people who have served should not be criticized for taking on the burden that is service. Quite the opposite.
Now if your political system is beyond repair and unsalvageable through reform, then sure, service is not honorable.
It's unfortunate that so many of my fellow citizens seem to take the intellectually lazy way out: Criticize the choice to serve, but be unwilling to reform/overthrow their government. This line of thinking is so widespread, it's truly disheartening.
Major General Smedley Butler was a 2X Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. In his literary magnum opus, “War Is a Racket” he argues just that. A true statesman, he informed FDR & Co of the Business Plot, the cartel of big businesses who plotted to overthrow the US government. An amazing American that time will not allow us to forget.
Smedley Butler is like a God figure to Marines, second only to Chesty Puller. I've often referenced this when arguing about the military-industrial complex with people who assume that if you criticize military spending you are somehow anti-military. I don't know if it has any effect.
Some might think it's a fallacious argument from authority, but I don't think it is. Fortunately, or unfortunately?, the people I tend to argue with about this stuff likely don't know what that fallacy is.
Although it was almost 30 years later, you could also quote Eisenhower's parting words:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex."
I've had several Marine and ex-Marine friends mention Butler to me. How does "War is a Racket" align or jive (or not!) with the presumed reason that most young men and women sign up for the military, which is to valiantly protect and defend the country?
I almost joined the Marines (but failed to make it for OCS due to health reasons). My dad's side of the family is a military family, with my grandfather being a career officer in the Army and two uncles also serving.
I think it's much deeper than "defend the country." For a lot of people, the military is the only ticket out of their bumfuck nowhere life. For some people, it's a chance to learn some self discipline and self confidence. For some people, it's a brotherhood of warriors they're part of. For some people, it's a way to get a college education. For some people, it's about defending their nation. Of course there are plenty of people who watch a Michael Bay movie and think they'll be some badass operator if they enlist.
I think someone like Smedley Butler might have viewed the military as a place that turns boys into confident men, teaches them valuable skills, instills discipline and self respect into them, and hooks them into a network of lifelong brothers.
War is not necessary for any of this, and he realized that when we go to war, he has to send his men to die so that people with contacts in Washington can get rich. He says in the linked paper that he suspected it when he was a Marine and finally realized it after he retired.
“How does "War is a Racket" align or jive (or not!) with the presumed reason that most young men and women sign up for the military, which is to valiantly protect and defend the country?”
It aligns with the fact that the warmongers are putting out a lot of propaganda that makes it a virtue to go to war and die for the warmongers.
It is worth pointing out that Butler served at the time when the US foreign policy was pretty explicitly based on aggressive interest in foreign trade: if another country wouldn't let Americans in for commerce, than send in the Marines to force them to do so.
As a result, it's worth cautioning people that just because a fact of foreign policy efforts was true 100 years ago does not mean that it is true today.
That reason is mostly presumed by those who do not sign up. Among those who do, the reasons are varied. Many sign up simply because they need a job or as a way to procure technical experience or funding for college. And many in the infantry and other combat arms jobs sign up because they want adventure or see it as a kind of initiation into manhood. Many feel a sense of responsibility to "do their part", but that isn't the primary motivating factor and is almost never explicitly stated. The scene in Black Hawk Down where Josh Hartnett's character is mocked for saying "I was trained to make a difference" is quite accurate.
Every generation has a supply of young men who go to war simply because they want to go to war. That's a human universal as far as I can tell. The reasons for the war are unimportant. It isn't until they become older and more introspective that they consider the big-picture morality of it. Smedley Butler was in his 50s when he made that speech.
Same way people genuinely join the police to make things better. They think they can make a difference, even if the system is all fucked up. Sometimes they're right.
War is still a racket [0]. Interesting closing reflections from the article:
... not enough Americans know or care about what happens in other countries or what their government and military is doing in their name. Do many Americans know that there are at least 1000 American military bases around the world, or that there is a fast growing Africa Command branch of the military that is involved in almost every country in Africa? Certain politicians would like to cut “discretionary” spending for such unnecessary things as education, health care, infrastructure, and protecting the environment, but over $1 Trillion a year in allotted to the military, secret intelligence, and “homeland security” in order to continue such unholy activities we have seen for over 100 years.
It is telling that such a high profile person like General Butler could give such influential speeches in the ’30’s, and that even a president (who was also a general, perhaps not coincidentally) could warn against the military-industrial complex in 1961. Such a thing has been unimaginable since the Carter presidency. With the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, there are no politicians today brave enough to take on this problem, and certainly none with as high a profile as president. Maybe it’s time for less money in the hands of arms producers and war profiteers. It’s time for less war and weapons in general. Sadly, this means that it must be time for new politicians. Only a citizenry which not only votes, but is also informed and involved, can do this.
I firmly believe that it is our responsibility (the ones with at least half a mind) to communicate and convince our fellow citizens that oversea wars should not be supported, and protested against.
So many lives have been lost for profit of others. It's truly a shame of humanity.
His statements seem clear but upon further reflection they are not clear.
There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.
Okay, so this was written in 1933. The obvious question to me is, would the author have supported US involvement in World War 2?
I guess with Pearl Harbor, the US was attacked. But the Japanese at the time might have said that the US really started the war because the trade embargo on Japan was destroying Japan's economic plans.
So was World War 2 about protecting American homes? Or was it about enabling the US to enforce a trade embargo on Japan to reduce the size of the Japanese empire?
I am not a history expert and I don't claim that these questions have simple answers. I am just saying, I don't think there is any clear-cut answer of when a war is really for self-defense or not.
Why did we embargo Japan? Because they were invading China. It's not like Japan was just peacefully sitting there, and we slapped a trade embargo on them for no reason.
So our options were to ignore that Japan was invading China, and continue to sell them steel, rubber, and gasoline, or to embargo them, or to declare war on them. We didn't declare war, which is consistent with the article's viewpoint. Should we have embargoed them (even at the risk of eventual war), or should we just continue to sell stuff to them that helps them attack China? To me, it's pretty clear that the embargo was the moral thing to do.
I think the words are not meant to be a comprehensive list of rules for exactly when war is justified. He's giving a broad overview of when he thinks it's justified. Of course one can get bogged down into particulars and wonder where Butler would stand but I think the misses the overall point he is making. Namely, that war is rarely the answer. When it is necessary then fight it but try not to make it a racket.
> I think the words are not meant to be a comprehensive list of rules for exactly when war is justified.
I disagree. I think his words are pretty clear. From the article:
> There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
If you read the piece OP linked (I highly recommend it, it is outstanding), or the whole book, the entire point is a warning about the looming threat of WW2, and his idea of the 3 practical steps to keep the USA out of it. So he was indeed very much against the US involvement in WW2. That's the main point of the book.
The United States should not have embargoed Japan. The United stars should not have been involved in any of the world wars. Sweden has been neutral in all conflicts since 1814 and that has worked out quite well for them.
If the USA hadnt gotten involved in the European theater of WW2, and invested the required resources in the Manhattan project, its very likely that the Nazis would have gotten the bomb first and used it to beat the red army. This would have allowed Hitler to consolidate power throughout the continent before eventually invading England. Although Im a stanch opponent of the modern military adventurism of recent administrations, getting involved to cut down the rise of Hilters power was a huge positive for generations of Europeans (and probably the rest of the world).
I don't think it's that difficult to extrapolate eventual difficulties for the Bill of Rights in a world dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as the two super powers.
That assumes either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan would have remained stable enough to matter as world powers. Either or both could just as well have collapsed from within.
According to CBO analysis the total cost of Afghan & Iraq wars is going to be something like $2.5 trillion for the US.
Imagine if this sum would have been used mostly nonviolently for bribing and buying influence in the region. Depending how the money is distributed, it would have been:
* $35k per each person in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you divide it into households maybe something like $100k - 150k per household.
* 2.5 million millionaires, or
* assuming you need to just bribe 20,000 most influential persons/families/groups in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan that would be something like $80 million each.
The CIA absolutely bribes local officials. The issue is you need to bribe the right people:
1. People who will change their opinion, reliably, when bribed.
2. People who won't backstab you (aka: take the money, and attack you anyway).
Figuring this out is an intelligence problem. To get good intelligence, you need boots on the ground. To have boots on the ground, you need to protect them. Etc. etc.
With regards to Afghanistan culture: they have a different way of thinking than us Americans. Sure, some can be bribed with money, but a history of being a warzone for... I think 200 years at least... has made their culture strange and alien to us.
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IIRC, Afghanistan culture is about accepting and protecting of strangers, even when they are under attack. But as soon as the stranger leaves, you're allowed to shoot them or otherwise kill them again. So this makes #2 more difficult, you need to understand the local's religion, their culture, their legends and their stories. (I'm probably butchering the concept, but I read about the details a long time ago...)
In the case of Afghanistan, if US Troops could take advantage of the "accepting of strangers" culture, then US Troops will be protected by the locals. Diplomacy leads to better war-fighters and safer people. Play your cards right, and you don't even need to bribe people. You'll be a good-guy in their culture and they'll protect you.
> You pay American soldiers and contractor salaries. You buy weapons and technology from American companies.
While there are wealthy individuals who profit from the military-industrial complex, it's hard to shake the impression that the majority of our bloated military budget is a federal make-work jobs program (with deaths of American troops and foreign civilians as a negative externality).
That's the point of the whole War is a Racket we are discussing.
If the choice is between immeasurable human suffering, domestic corruption and jobs or just solving the problem, the war racket wins. Removing the profit motive is the key suggestion in the War is a Racket.
That is the wrong way to look at it. By this token digging holes in America is a profitable enterprise. If you pay hole diggers in America, hey all the money goes the American economy.
Whenever talking about an economic issue people have to stop thinking in terms of money and start thinking in terms of goods and services made.
The point of an economy is not to circulate money for kicks and giggles. Money is just to facilitate exchange of goods and services.
A working economy creates a large number of goods and services which the inhabitants wants and needs. You pay a worker to build a car and he makes something people benefit from. You pay a worker to make a missile and he makes something which does not improve the lives of anything. It is a complete waste of time and effort.
A bigger question is who did it flow back to and how can we track that? Certainly we have contractor operations that are US based, but it is not always clear if what they are doing aligns with American interests. Giving them more money may actually be increasing corruption.
If we are going to do opportunity costs, imagine where America would be if it spent that kind of money on its own damn people. Like education, healthcare, infrastructure, and the economic "cost" of enforcing clean air and water regulations, increasing fuel efficiency targets, and phasing out fossil fuels.
China has been using the last 19 years to do just that, building out their infrastructure and R&D (and in other countries, too, see the Belt and Road initiative) while the US has bogged itself down in the middle east. In 2003 when the US went to war in Iraq, the US GDP was 8 times the size of China's. Today the US GDP is 1.4 times China's. The Chinese economy has grown 24 times over in the last 25 years. The US economy has about tripled (a little less) in that time.
> According to CBO analysis the total cost of Afghan & Iraq wars is going to be something like $2.5 trillion for the US.
Since the US just adds this to its national debt, there is no actual cost for the US. The cost is paid by holders of US government bonds (e.g. non-US central banks).
The US is literally paying for its wars with bonds. That’s why the US is so powerful — no other country can pay for wars using paper with stuff written on it (i.e. a bond).
Corruption is not dependable. There's always the option to simply just take your money, and not hold up to your end of the bargain. War ensures the outcome you desire.
(Read my comment in the context of the article. War ensures the cycle perpetuates, and our modern version of this article is maintaining the current status quo with the military industrial complex, ala the desired outcome of more wars.)
Except it doesn't. Every war the US has engaged in since WWII has had rather poor outcomes and cost a fortune. I would have risked failed corruption instead.
Anyway you don't have to dump a trillion in Iraq in one go. You would have bribed people with individual amounts over longer time and measured progress and outcomes.
I’ve thought about this as well... probably the “best” way to do it is the first, give everybody the money equally. It’s not a bribe, it’s a UBI, and it lifts the whole country out of poverty, which generally means the curtailing of whatever issues we probably had that was driving us to conflict with them in the first place.
kneejerk thought : total _dollars_ cost is $2.5 trillion, whereas other dimensions have costs too, lives lost, morale, reputation. Not sure how to think about any of that.
"One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket."
What about your allies' homes? If an aggressor can pick off victims one at a time, you won't have any allies left when they come for your home.
It also assumes that there is no form of dramatically assummetric attack that is hard to defend against. That may have been true when this was written, but nuclear weapons changed the game.
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Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective. Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.
Had those young men simply decided to do nothing rather than join, the world would have been a better place.
I'd be curious to know Butler's take on WWII (he died in 1940). That's the one that people seem most hung up on. It's the only war in living memory considered near universally "good" by those in the US. It's the war that's invoked by every administration trying to stir up popular support for a military adventure in a country most voters can't place on a map.
I'm doubtful our current reverence for WWII will stand the test of time. Long after Hitler has been replaced by the next boogeyman, history students of the future will scratch their heads at what could have possibly motivated a young man to volunteer for such a fool's errand.
US won big in that war. WWI nearly bankrupted the British Empire, guess who it was loaning money from? (Hint: it's the US[1]). The only finally paid it off in 2015.
WWI turned the US into a world power, and marked the end of many (other) Empires.
As for the European powers, the war made a lot of sense before it started, as a lot of money was spent on making the shiny toys that killed so many people. Maybe not to the citizens of the countries that took part in the war, but surely to the profiteers.
Finally, one can argue that the war made sense for Germany in the long run, in spite of all the losses. Before the war, Germany was surrounded by Empires: the Russian Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman ones. Germany was allied with some of them, threatened by others, but the history shows how fickle the alliances were.
Fast-forward to today, and Germany is still there, while the Empires are gone. WW1 effectively took down the Russian Empire, and was the beginning of the end of the British one (to say nothing of the others).
I am being facetious here, but if the goal of WW1 was to establish a more friendly Europe for German ambitions, then that goal was eventually accomplished.
That's to say, the war made sense for Germany because it was surrounded by states that stood to lose more (if you ignore human life).
Of course, this argument doesn't make sense if you care about people to the slightest extent. But the people who start the wars rarely do.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_nationa...
The many countries (sometimes newly established after the fall of an empire like austrian-hungary or russia) suddenly found themselves with a completely new political system.
The november revolution in germany resulted in the abolishment of the monarchy and firmly entreched social-democrats inside the political spectrum. It also shows us why having a young democracy without a strong sense of institutional-ism and tradition is incredible fragile.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/10401...
End of the day, it was all about resources, and is no different than today’s conflicts, which boil down to oil on the supply and the control of money on the demand side.
IMO the increasing irrelevance of the Middle East will continue to increase world peace and prosperity, at the expense of some truly awful regimes which will crumble.
I am not so sure. I think the main reason that decolonization happened is that a whole generation of young men were lost and Europe was too exhausted and poor from the two world wars to keep its colonies.
Without WWI, there would not have been WWII which would have left the European nations as the premier powers in the world who would have held on to their colonies in Asia and Africa.
So without WWI, there would still be a pretty high chance that India would still be a British colony.
Europe may have been a better place, but probably not the rest of the world.
We get to look back with hind sight and only remember negative consequences from positive actions. The US entered WW1 after Germany began unrestricted submarine ware fare for the second time, and coming on the heels of the Zimmerman telegram. France and Belgium were invaded by hostile power. Germany feared Russian modernization and fear of not being able to Compete with France and Russia. Russia sided with the Serbs. France Sided with Russia whose alliance it has sought to counteract the power of a newly unified Germany which had defeated France in 1871 taken territory and imposed a large reparation payment. Austria an absolute monarchy wanted to quite serb nationalism.
Hitler's extermination of the Jews will have him as a historical villain for a long, long time.
The difference was the US got FDR instead of Hitler.
Modern Economists hate talking about this and have managed to drop it down the memory hole.
I don't envy the people living in those times. Hitler is one hell of a boogeyman to top.
The ethnically targeted nature of the holocaust is the main claim to 'worst of the worst' status, but honestly it isn't obvious to me that a dead Jew is more horrific than a dead anyone else. They are both pretty bad.
The things that caused WWII, Hitler's rise to power, and the systems that enabled and, frankly, bent him and the Nazis towards the evils they committed, I think we were culpable for, for how Germany was positioned on the world stage post WWI. Germany was ripe for a demagogue, and people needed the sense of security mindlessly following one provides.
Hitler wasn’t the fruit of Great Depression suffering. Most of the world was suffering the consequences of the Great Depression. Hell, many countries had autocrat leaders at the same time. None have committed anywhere near the level of atrocity that Hitler has.
Because Hitler was a product of German people’s fanatical antisemitism and anti-slavism. The roots of which reach back long before World War I.
Bismarck was famous for and boastful of his antipolonism and often called Poles “animals”, “wolves” etc. And he’s thought of as that “progressive” father of modern Germany.
With a dad like that it’s hardly a wonder that the kid turned out to be shitty.
As it stands, a third of us were murdered by the "Third Reich", and our numbers have still not recovered.
Told by whom? Oh that's right, the news media. People really need to go look into why the NYTimes, WashingtonPost, Pulitzer's properties, Hearst's properties, etc were created and how their yellow journalism played into wars even to this day.
Also keep in mind, the biggest ( proportionally ) benefactor of war isn't defense contractors, it's the news industry.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/tucker-carlson-scores-highest-...
People forgot that WashingtonPost went bankrupt in the first half of the 1900s and the news industry was in danger of collapse. What saved the industry? War.
Keep in mind that the news industry, especially the NYTimes ( a company created by a banker ) editorial board, attacked Butler as a "hoaxer" ( aka conspiracy peddler ). How times change, but the propaganda remains the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
> Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective.
WW1 makes total sense. By WW1, the entire world had been conquered by European powers and America. Every piece of land on earth was under European/American control or influence. So european powers had no one left to fight but themselves.
> Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.
Europe was in ruins and more importantly fractured. Go read TS Eliot's The Waste Land. It's partly about his angst of over a broken europe and the collapse of western civilization and the ultimate pointlessness of that war.
> It's the only war in living memory considered near universally "good" by those in the US.
It's considered good because propaganda tells us it's good. Propaganda tells us its good because we came out on top. But I don't see how a war with nukes and upwards of 120 million dead could be considered good. That's more dead than the worst pandemic in recent history - spanish flu which killed upwards of 100 million. I doubt anyone would say the spanish flu was "good".
> I'm doubtful our current reverence for WWII will stand the test of time.
Reverence of ww2 will be determined by who is in power. History, as all other propaganda, is written by those in power.
I think this occurs within some time frame of the event, and even then only among the better known, funded and "court approved" historians. There will be outcast historians that plug away at recording various facts surrounding the event (e.g., continued investigation into whether FDR was intentionally bellicose, was it truly necessary to nuke Japan, was fire bombing the German civilians tactically useful, etc.).
Which we all know is hot garbage. The government quite literally says, your individual freedoms are not greater than our goal for the country. If you ask me, that sounds NO different than communism! But when you fight for uncle sam, it must mean "the greater good" is good, just because the "greater good" isn't commie red "greater good."
The rational was to keep Poland and the Czech republic free. However at the end of the war neither country was free. They had fallen under the Soviet sphere of influence. The goals they set hence failed.
They KNEW Hitler planned to attack Russia. He had spoken for years about that. That meant they would go through Poland. The sneaky but rational solution would have been to sacrifice Poland temporary and let Hitler attack Russia. Russia and Germany would have worn each other out.
At the end a heavily built up allied military could have marched in and cleaned up.
So on the one hand, Cold War Poland ended up a puppet of the Soviets. Repression of dissidents, etc. But the Poles were alive. On the other hand, had Nazi Germany won and completed their plan there would be no Poles left to complain about their lack of freedom.
So was WWII really a mistake?
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
Germany was not ready to fight a war in 1937, 1938, or even 1939, when it actually invaded Poland. Had the West actually responded to German aggression with a land assault, even as late as the actual invasion of Poland, then it's rather likely that the war could have been cleaned up before the Soviet Union would have invaded Poland.
Furthermore, an appropriate Western response to actually supporting the Central European states would probably have given the USSR pause before invading, as it would have demonstrated that the defensive treaties were not mere pieces of paper.
[1] https://fee.org/people/garet-garrett/
It's a plenty popular idea, but people won't say so publicly because of social pressure: The Greatest Generation, The Good War, etc.
Words cannot express how disappointed I am with people who say things like this.
Assuming you believe that your country's political system is not worth overthrowing, then serving your country is an honorable act, and people who have served should not be criticized for taking on the burden that is service. Quite the opposite.
Now if your political system is beyond repair and unsalvageable through reform, then sure, service is not honorable.
It's unfortunate that so many of my fellow citizens seem to take the intellectually lazy way out: Criticize the choice to serve, but be unwilling to reform/overthrow their government. This line of thinking is so widespread, it's truly disheartening.
Some might think it's a fallacious argument from authority, but I don't think it is. Fortunately, or unfortunately?, the people I tend to argue with about this stuff likely don't know what that fallacy is.
Although it was almost 30 years later, you could also quote Eisenhower's parting words:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex."
I think it's much deeper than "defend the country." For a lot of people, the military is the only ticket out of their bumfuck nowhere life. For some people, it's a chance to learn some self discipline and self confidence. For some people, it's a brotherhood of warriors they're part of. For some people, it's a way to get a college education. For some people, it's about defending their nation. Of course there are plenty of people who watch a Michael Bay movie and think they'll be some badass operator if they enlist.
I think someone like Smedley Butler might have viewed the military as a place that turns boys into confident men, teaches them valuable skills, instills discipline and self respect into them, and hooks them into a network of lifelong brothers.
War is not necessary for any of this, and he realized that when we go to war, he has to send his men to die so that people with contacts in Washington can get rich. He says in the linked paper that he suspected it when he was a Marine and finally realized it after he retired.
It aligns with the fact that the warmongers are putting out a lot of propaganda that makes it a virtue to go to war and die for the warmongers.
As a result, it's worth cautioning people that just because a fact of foreign policy efforts was true 100 years ago does not mean that it is true today.
Every generation has a supply of young men who go to war simply because they want to go to war. That's a human universal as far as I can tell. The reasons for the war are unimportant. It isn't until they become older and more introspective that they consider the big-picture morality of it. Smedley Butler was in his 50s when he made that speech.
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... not enough Americans know or care about what happens in other countries or what their government and military is doing in their name. Do many Americans know that there are at least 1000 American military bases around the world, or that there is a fast growing Africa Command branch of the military that is involved in almost every country in Africa? Certain politicians would like to cut “discretionary” spending for such unnecessary things as education, health care, infrastructure, and protecting the environment, but over $1 Trillion a year in allotted to the military, secret intelligence, and “homeland security” in order to continue such unholy activities we have seen for over 100 years.
It is telling that such a high profile person like General Butler could give such influential speeches in the ’30’s, and that even a president (who was also a general, perhaps not coincidentally) could warn against the military-industrial complex in 1961. Such a thing has been unimaginable since the Carter presidency. With the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, there are no politicians today brave enough to take on this problem, and certainly none with as high a profile as president. Maybe it’s time for less money in the hands of arms producers and war profiteers. It’s time for less war and weapons in general. Sadly, this means that it must be time for new politicians. Only a citizenry which not only votes, but is also informed and involved, can do this.
[0] https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/15/war-is-still-a-racket/
There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.
Okay, so this was written in 1933. The obvious question to me is, would the author have supported US involvement in World War 2?
I guess with Pearl Harbor, the US was attacked. But the Japanese at the time might have said that the US really started the war because the trade embargo on Japan was destroying Japan's economic plans.
So was World War 2 about protecting American homes? Or was it about enabling the US to enforce a trade embargo on Japan to reduce the size of the Japanese empire?
I am not a history expert and I don't claim that these questions have simple answers. I am just saying, I don't think there is any clear-cut answer of when a war is really for self-defense or not.
So our options were to ignore that Japan was invading China, and continue to sell them steel, rubber, and gasoline, or to embargo them, or to declare war on them. We didn't declare war, which is consistent with the article's viewpoint. Should we have embargoed them (even at the risk of eventual war), or should we just continue to sell stuff to them that helps them attack China? To me, it's pretty clear that the embargo was the moral thing to do.
I disagree. I think his words are pretty clear. From the article:
> There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
In many cases, there is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
Imagine if this sum would have been used mostly nonviolently for bribing and buying influence in the region. Depending how the money is distributed, it would have been:
* $35k per each person in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you divide it into households maybe something like $100k - 150k per household.
* 2.5 million millionaires, or
* assuming you need to just bribe 20,000 most influential persons/families/groups in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan that would be something like $80 million each.
corruption >> war, almost every time.
1. People who will change their opinion, reliably, when bribed. 2. People who won't backstab you (aka: take the money, and attack you anyway).
Figuring this out is an intelligence problem. To get good intelligence, you need boots on the ground. To have boots on the ground, you need to protect them. Etc. etc.
With regards to Afghanistan culture: they have a different way of thinking than us Americans. Sure, some can be bribed with money, but a history of being a warzone for... I think 200 years at least... has made their culture strange and alien to us.
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IIRC, Afghanistan culture is about accepting and protecting of strangers, even when they are under attack. But as soon as the stranger leaves, you're allowed to shoot them or otherwise kill them again. So this makes #2 more difficult, you need to understand the local's religion, their culture, their legends and their stories. (I'm probably butchering the concept, but I read about the details a long time ago...)
In the case of Afghanistan, if US Troops could take advantage of the "accepting of strangers" culture, then US Troops will be protected by the locals. Diplomacy leads to better war-fighters and safer people. Play your cards right, and you don't even need to bribe people. You'll be a good-guy in their culture and they'll protect you.
In fact CIA and SOF had pinned Taliban and Al-Qaeda combatants into Kunduz in November 2001. Then came the order to stand down let them fly into Pakistan unharmed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunduz_airlift#Revelation
You pay American soldiers and contractor salaries. You buy weapons and technology from American companies.
Bribes don't have the same economic effect.
For these large dollar amounts, how you spend it matters as much as how much you spend.
While there are wealthy individuals who profit from the military-industrial complex, it's hard to shake the impression that the majority of our bloated military budget is a federal make-work jobs program (with deaths of American troops and foreign civilians as a negative externality).
If the choice is between immeasurable human suffering, domestic corruption and jobs or just solving the problem, the war racket wins. Removing the profit motive is the key suggestion in the War is a Racket.
Whenever talking about an economic issue people have to stop thinking in terms of money and start thinking in terms of goods and services made.
The point of an economy is not to circulate money for kicks and giggles. Money is just to facilitate exchange of goods and services.
A working economy creates a large number of goods and services which the inhabitants wants and needs. You pay a worker to build a car and he makes something people benefit from. You pay a worker to make a missile and he makes something which does not improve the lives of anything. It is a complete waste of time and effort.
Since the US just adds this to its national debt, there is no actual cost for the US. The cost is paid by holders of US government bonds (e.g. non-US central banks).
The US is literally paying for its wars with bonds. That’s why the US is so powerful — no other country can pay for wars using paper with stuff written on it (i.e. a bond).
(Read my comment in the context of the article. War ensures the cycle perpetuates, and our modern version of this article is maintaining the current status quo with the military industrial complex, ala the desired outcome of more wars.)
Anyway you don't have to dump a trillion in Iraq in one go. You would have bribed people with individual amounts over longer time and measured progress and outcomes.
What about your allies' homes? If an aggressor can pick off victims one at a time, you won't have any allies left when they come for your home.
It also assumes that there is no form of dramatically assummetric attack that is hard to defend against. That may have been true when this was written, but nuclear weapons changed the game.