La guerra es una estafa

What prompted the most decorated soldier in the United States to publish the fiercest indictment of war? We may never know, although Smedley Butler certainly knew what he was talking about when he launched his anathema against the economic interests that led entire generations to the slaughterhouse. Butler participated in multiple military operations for the colonial and commercial expansion of the United States before that country became, after World War II, the hegemonic superpower. Wherever military intervention was needed (Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, China...), the US government turned to the corps that intervened most often in wars in the 20th century, the Marines, and to its most prominent and loyal servant, Smedley Butler. But it was the industrialized barbarism of World War I, with millions of deaths, and the imminent corollary of World War II, that caused Butler to explode in 1935 and publish War is a Racket, which was much more than a pamphleteering indictment: rather a documented account of how young people are massacred for the unspeakable economic interests of their governments, that is, of their elders. 'I have the feeling that I have been acting all this time as a highly skilled bandit in the service of the big Wall Street companies and their bankers. In a word, I have been a gangster in the service of capitalism. Thus, in 1914, I secured oil interests in Mexico. I helped transform Cuba into a country where the people of the National City Bank could quietly evade taxes. I participated in the 'cleansing' of Nicaragua from 1902 to 1912 on behalf of the international banking firm Brown Brothers Harriman. In 1916, on behalf of the big American sugar companies, I brought “civilization” to the Dominican Republic. In 1923, I “straightened out” affairs in Honduras in the interests of American fruit companies. In 1927, in China, I secured the interests of Standard Oil.