Fighting for corruption and profits

The great Gen. Smedley Butler wrote his classic War is a Racket in response to the pointless carnage of WWI. Some 15-22 million largely adolescent boys died for absolutely nothing. That fact that they can’t provide a more accurate estimate than that tells you clearly about the incomprehensible numbers involved.

In 1846, President Polk decided to wage war on Mexico. Was the land grab that followed, including what became California, worth the lives of the nearly 14,000 Americans who were killed? Or the 25,000 Mexicans, including an unknown number of civilians? Mexico in fact lost 55% of its territory to the U.S. from 1836-1848. No wonder the La Raza folks hate gringos. In April 1847, the Massachusetts legislature passed a resolution denouncing the war as “a gigantic crime” waged against a “weak neighbor” for the purposes of conquest, territorial aggrandizement, and the extension of slavery. In 1848, the House of Representatives passed a resolution stating that “the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president.” Among those prominent figures opposing the war was then Rep. Abraham Lincoln, who said, “Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.”

In 2011, the court historians begrudgingly upped the number of deaths in our own Civil War to as many as 850,000, far more casualties than America has experienced in any of its countless foreign misadventures over the years. All those largely adolescent boys died because some southern states wanted to secede from the Union. You know, that whole consent of the governed thing. The entire foundation of our War for Independence. But “Honest” Abe Lincoln, whose words in 1846 foretold exactly the situation with the Confederate states fifteen years later, let every citizen know that this Union was definitely not a voluntary one. Consent of the governed was forever shattered, but very few seemed to notice. Or care. A full quarter of the male population in the South died. Talk about a lost generation. Lincoln annihilated the balance of powers and created the imperial template for all the “best” presidents to follow. The fact that our corrupt establishment promotes him as our greatest leader, the secular saint of our civilization, says everything about that civilization. The rape and plunder of Mexican civilians was perfected to a fine art by Lincoln’s “Total War” strategy.

After perhaps the longest period of relative peace this country has ever experienced, in 1898, the first official false flag caused us to ignore George Washington’s Farewell Address, and the wise words of John Quincy Adams that “America does not go abroad in search of foreign monsters to destroy.” The power of a kept press, led by William Randolph Hearst, manipulated the country into a war on foreign soil, with the chant of “Remember the Maine,” the U.S. ship that sunk, causing 3,289 deaths. The problem was the Spanish didn’t sink the USS Maine, as even the Court Historians would eventually admit. More than 2,000 additional Americans died in the war itself, which took the lives of anywhere from 55-60,000 Spanish troops. But Hearst sold a lot of papers. Another line had been crossed, one the Founders could never have envisioned. President McKinley was a reluctant warrior, and forgotten novelist Taylor Caldwell would depict his 1901 assassination as being directly related to that reluctance.

With the sinking of the Maine a battleship precedent, an identical situation with the torpedoing of the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania in May, 1915, would precipitate U.S. involvement in perhaps the least justifiable war the world had ever seen. Along with the millions of Europeans slaughtered because Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated were some 116,516 U.S. soldiers. George M. Cohan became a Hollywood hero for writing Over There to inspire these boys to sacrifice their lives in far flung trenches. The odious statist character of Uncle Sam became very popular, with the Orwellian slogan, “Uncle Sam Wants YOU” somehow appealing to the masses. Smedley Butler focused on all the new fortunes this war had created, and declared that war was never about enemies, but opportunities for profit. “There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.“ Butler stated, reminding us that “A few profit-and the many pay.”

Read More: Patriotic Purge: The Real Cost of War