I've added a new text to the Liberty Freebies section of this website – War Is A Racket. This classic anti-war text was written in the 1930s by Major General Smedley D. Butler (USMC). Butler, a two time Medal of Honor winner was a veteran of many of the bloodiest American military campaigns of his time. MajGen Butler's was a time of bloody hand-to-hand combat and "charging the hill," unlike today's military campaigns which consist of obliterating a nation by air and then sending in the troops to mop up the survivors. His thoughts on war and avoiding such can be found by clicking here. I can't say I agree with some of his suggestions, such as instituting an extremely broad and creatively crafted draft in order to force those who benefit most from war into mandatory service, but I understand the point he was trying to convey.
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This entry also posted at Stand Down.
I think someone posted this a couple months back, as well. But it’s just as good for a re-run, in fact I’d been thinking about looking it up.
But I’m sure this is just the kind of thing Laura Schlessinger was talking about when she said that she feared for the republic due to the low quality of our schools. Yes, this must be exactly what she had in mind to add to the little kiddies’ curriculum…
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30692
Posted by natasha on January 28, 2003 03:24 AM
Compulsory military service at times of war by politicians is as good a guarantee for peace as can be hoped for in our democracies.
I’m astonished at the system which allows rich good ol’ boys out of conscription and enables them to send others to fight wars which they themselves are unwilling to fight.
This doesn’t preclude war mongering vets from pushing a war agenda but I suspect it would reduce the willingness of others in the American congress from assuming war is a viable avenue for achieving political objectives.
One of the most narrowminded sayings I’ve heard so many times repeated is “war is diplomacy by other means”. If that is so, robbing people by gunpoint is shopping by other means. Or taking an axe to a business partner is just aggressive business negotations.
The semantics of war reveal how detached those who put the life of other’s at risk. They insulate themselves in language that softens the reality and comforts their conscience.
Here’s a plan for Iraqi’s once the bombs start dropping: Send parcels of the dead and the limbs of the amputed back to congressmen, journalists and religious speakers in the US. Let them smell, see and feel the price of their actions.
Or at the very least I hope someone in Iraq to bring back the true horror of war home by sending uncensored images of the atrocity that military conflict always brings.
I’ve got scarred memories of the effects of the Iran-Iraq war and the victims of the Bosnian civil war in my mind. This “rational” evaluation of the “military option” becomes a sick joke when you’ve seen the effects up close.
War in the name of peace… an oxymoron I can’t believe is so widely accepted.
Posted by Seyed Razavi on January 28, 2003 04:03 AM
Actually I’ve posted it twice, (most recently three days ago) but I agree it’s worth reading over and over and over:
http://www.nowarblog.org/archives/000623.html
Posted by aronst on January 28, 2003 12:57 PM