Smedley Butler Quotes
If only more of today's military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite's as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.
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 is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.
War like any other racket, pays high dividends to the very few. The cost of operations is always transferred to the people who do not profit.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.
Why don't those damn oil companies fly their own flags on their personal property-maybe a flag with a gas pump on it.
I spent thirty-three years in the Marines, most of my time being a hlgh class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
War is a racket. 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.
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
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.
One hundred and twenty Marines were detailed to officer a force of twenty-six hundred Haitians.
It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country...but the profits...skyrocket.
...The war (WWI) cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion. $39 billion was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits.