"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
"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. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
General Smedley Butler
12 comments:
Gee Jemmy, just because he was a good soldier doesn't mean his politics are good, now does it. The idea that if the US military disappears the world will suddenly become an idyllic peace loving paradise is standard liberal mindless dreaming. It has no basis in reality.
Yes, if we caught off men's penises at birth there will be no more rape. Lets try it. You first! Lol
Doesn't mean his politics are bad either, dummy. He didn't say the military should disappear, now, did he? Be a good little fascist and stop making things up. He said that the US army should defend US borders, nothing more. Sorry, there are words of more than one syllable (bits to you) so you might have to ask a grown-up to explain.
As for the rape comment. Where did that come from? I'm not interested in your mutilation fantasies, try to stick to the subject.
It's called an analogy Jemmy. Like the gun control debate. It ain't the guns, or the armies. It's the people.
So lets see according to your theory we should have let Germany do its thing in both world wars, not lifted a finger, right? After we "repelled" the Japanese at Pearl Harbor we should have let them go about their merry way, raping and pillaging throughout the Pacific. Not our place to get involved. In Bosnia, let what happens, happens, same with East Germany? The Korean people would be better off if Korea was united under the north's rule, right Jemmy? Sure about that? If we had left the USSR unchecked to bully and coerce, if there had been no cold war because we did nothing to counter them, you think the worlds a better place, do you Jemmy? If china had no competition for resouces, that's better right, because the chinese are magnificently benevolent, fair minded and unfailingly generous, eh?
Like I said earlier Jemmy, lala fairy land, you can live there if you like, but it doesn't actually exist in the real world. Dream dream dreammmmm, dreammmmm dream.....
As I recall the US had every intention of sitting out the war until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.
"We won't be over till it's over over there", was the British soldiers' take on American musical braggadocio. As for Korea, that was the American Empire in action, dragging all its client states into a war to stop the East turning red. China was a big market to lose, and the rest of Asia was America's stampng ground. So Vietnam and other useless adventures.
Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of the allied - the USSR was our ally - victory at Stalingrad, a turning point in the war against Hitler and his invincible army. How many Yanks died there?
I'm quite familiar with the battle of Stalingrad. Read several books on the subject, most notably the one by Antony Beevor. How many jeeps, trucks and other materials did we send the Ruskies while they used their own people as sacrificial lambs to stop the German advance. Why else did they lose 25 million people- far more than anyone else in wwII. The nazis drove 1000 miles inland and nearly reached Moscow. We had to ship every man, tank, helmet and bullet thousands of miles just to be in the fray. We didn't have to, now did we? We did it because eventually we knew we had to sacrifice our brave sons for the continents fucked up behavior. We didn't start the war Jemmy, but we sure helped end it. Or was Dunkirk an aberration? Would your blokes have beaten Rommel in North Africa without the Americans? Taken Sicilty?I don't think so.
Face it Jemmy, the world needs a big strong America. We may not always make the best decision, but we always try to do the right thing for the most people. Resent us because the world is very imperfect if you must, but it seems a silly thing to do.
The world needs a big strong America as much as kids in Asia need to be fried by Obama's drones.
You do get off on that military stuff, don't you? I'm surprised you never signed up for a spell in the military and marched toward the sound of the guns. That's a bit of piss-taking, you armchair warrior. Stick to the John Wayne* films and and the electronic war games. You can take gun-worshipping and uber-patriotism too far, and forget that your clerical skills are needed on the home front.
As for world war 2, I know we would have lost without the US and the USSR. There were plenty of our ruling class ready to hold out the hand of friendship to Hitler. Nazi sympathisers in the Royal family and all that. A lot like you, virtual reality warrior - a racist red-baiter of your stripe would be screaming that the US was backing the wrong horse. It was old FDR - now there's a name to bring you out in a rash - who wanted to join the fray. I think he had dreams of empire you see, and he saw the way forward was to unite with the reds against your mate Adolf, then divvy up the world with Joe Stalin, and a few crumbs for yesterday's men, the Brits. Little shopkeeper Trumeman didn't see it that way, so on to paranoia and the military-industrial complex. And a system of brainwashing that produces people like you and Charles Manson and Bomber McVeigh.
.you haven't a kind word for anyone cept the always virtuous common man, eh Jemmy? All the elites and managerial class are 100% asshole megalomaniacal child abusers, right? Those in power are always presumed to be of nefarious intent, no doubt.
Regards my personal situation, it doesn't really matter. I don't make policy or write laws do I now Jemmy? So who cares. The point is while all our leaders are humans, and thus deeply flawed (unlike unfailingly noble class warriors, who haven't a selfish bone in their body, riiiggghhhttttt), most are more good than bad.
US society functions as well as anyplace on the planet on a day to day basis. We are free, mostly, and live better than most in the world. The country works Jemmy, even with its many imperfections. If we were truly a vile, savage, barbaric, bloodthirsty, cruel, stupid, incompetent, corrupt, as a society as you like to suggest, we would not be in the position we are in. That's simple fact. If our succes were due only to the fact that we were
Cheaters and bullies, our light would have extinguished long ago. But our light shines brighter now than ever!!!
Hate the US for all you are worth. It changes nothing.
"All the elites and managerial class are 100% asshole megalomaniacal child abusers, right?"
I have no evidence as to what percentage of the people you venerate are child-abusers. As for the rest of the above, yes, beyond question.
Just because I think that you (or your opinions) are vile... bloodthirsty ... cruel .. stupid, doesn't mean I think all your compatriots are tarred with the same brush. But your ruling class are certainly all of the above. Some are not so stupid, of course, but that only makes their crimes worse.
Now don't try repeating that cobblers about there being no ruling class in the US, because it doesn't wash. Whether or not you believe it, I can't say, though you do display the mentality of the severely brainwashed, like many of your flag-wagging fellow citizens. It's an important component of that structure they have erected in cloud-cuckoo land.
And you call me utopian.
This exchange is beginning to tire me. I suggest you retire or prepare to deliver your knockout punch.
Has it ever occurred to you that if you left my blog alone for a while my visitor statistics would plummet; and if you ceased to comment there would be virtually no sign of anyone reading these pages. Wouldn't you find that outcome stisfactory? You can be assured that I wouldn't mourn your absence.
In his dire but accurate assessment of the oppressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa ("A Bleak Anniversary for the Arab Spring," Jan. 28), Thane Rosenbaum neglects to mention two: Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules over roughly 98% of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Neither respects the features of a democratic society that Mr. Rosenbaum lists—"religious tolerance and pluralism, the rule of law, freedom of press and expression, respect for human rights, and equality for women, minorities and gays."
In Gaza, political freedom, religious freedom and freedom of association are severely curtailed, women's rights are limited, human-rights activists are targeted and homosexuality is a criminal offense. In the West Bank, PA President Mahmoud Abbas recently entered the ninth year of his four-year term with no election in sight, journalists are regularly thrown in jail and non-Muslims have been imprisoned for eating during Ramadan. In its latest report, Freedom House, an independent watchdog group dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world, rated both governments as "not free".
But never a word of criticism for these groups, eh Jemmy? No matter what they do, or how they act, they are superior, morally, to the US, right Jemy?
I've considered all your points Jemmy. if I wanted to spend all day writing kudos and ditto, there are plenty of places I could do that. That's boring, IMO. I suspect you appreciate the back and forth, as well. After all, saying right on mate and great post lad, provides limited opportunity for debate and analysis, now doesn't it?
In fact Jemmy, I was having dinner of a good friend recently, a second generation Lebanese. He was saying how in America, unlike elsewhere, wealth rotates. Sure, there are some holdovers in each generation, but there are also the newly wealthy. For gods sake, I loathe Obama, but surely you can't argue he came from the ruling class????!!! The Rockefeller kids still have money, I guess, but they are largely irrelevant outside of summer bashes in the Hamptons. So who cares. Do you think it unfair a patriarch is able to pass down his remaining wealth.? Don't you want to see your grandchildren benefit from your hard work and astute financial planning? Or would you rather they sit back and wait on the govt to bestow their livelihood, according to ITS wishes?
The ruling class in the us is not permanent. We have no royalty, really. Wealth built up can and usually does dissipate in a generation or two.
Frankly, I'll take the view of my Lebanese pal, who lives in the US and knows it first hand, over your and the loathesome tgias views, sitting thousands of miles away never having set foot on our shores, thinking you know the US better than its own citizens!!! Really, the arrogance
First, what's your source for this quotation? That is, which AIPAC payee wrote it?
The difference between Hamas (the democratically elected administration of the Gaza Gulag) and most other human rights abusers around the world is that Hamas doesn't kowtow to the US. It wouldn't take much to make it do so, just stop giving the greenlight to the Israeli ethnic cleansers. Adopt a little even-handedness in your nation's policy of world domination.
Do you know how many thousands of Palestinians, including children, are held in detention without trial? Isn't that an abuse of their human rights, you blinkered bigot.
Why don't I criticise Hamas and Fatah. Really, does my miniscule voice have to join the tsunami of criticism from the mainstream media?
Audi alteram partem, for Christ's sake! The BBC, Fox News, in fact the whole of the Dirty Digger Murdoch's mighty propaganda machine is relaying the Zionist lies and attacking Hamas. Why should I do the same. Unlike you I don't kiss the arses of the super-rich and the warmongers.
Of course. If you can't assault the premise attack the source. Standard fare.
Tell me Jemmy, these kids in detention, these darling peaceniks, these paragons of virtue, why does Israel spend the time, money, resources to imprison them? Because Israelis are mean and nasty? Or is because the "kids" are a bunch of rock throwing, assault making, violent thugs? I suspect the latter.
Oh yeah, you only kiss the asses of those whom you deem to be fellow put upons. Woe is Jemmy and his hoard of perpetually disgruntled mischief makers..
There are PLENTT of outlets that espouse your view. Or would you rather none did? Totalitarian utopia, ah Jemmy? Lets see, I support the Jews of Israel and you don't, yet somehow I'm the bigot. Whatever works for your highly filtered and narrowed vision of the world, Jemmy.
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