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I'm not sure how it was in Butler's time, but I've read that the overwhelming majority of casualties in modern warfare are civilians. It would seem to me that they are the ones who pay "the biggest part of the bill".
Not that I would deny that the people doing the mass murder can themselves become the victims of war. But I'd personally have more sympathy for civilians who are not trying to murder others but are themselves murdered.
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A couple notes on the war drum:
The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force [0] targeting the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks has been invoked to deploy US armed forces to Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia and Syria. [1][2]
A new proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force [3] targeting ISIS, "its associated forces," and "any successor organizations" is arguably more open-ended.
The author of the proposal, Lindsey Graham (Senior Senator from South Carolina), seeks to grant the next president "the ability to go after ISIS without limitation to geography, time and means." [4]
[0]: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS...
[1]: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf
[2]: https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf
[3]: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text
[4]: http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/congr...
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We enter the conflicts under whatever pretext is popularized in the media, but the real reason is to fuel warfare R&D efforts, grow surveillance infrastructure, and collect data that reflects situations our military leaders forecast to be important.
Large contracting firms profit. Soldiers lose time, often also money, often their mental health and family relationships, and sometimes their lives. Taxpayers lose money. Foreign civilians lose their lives. Few benefits are ever given to soldiers or foreigners, if they are even paid lip service with promises of benefits at all.
It's basically a string of smaller scale proxy wars to fuel tech, surveillance, and population control between larger, "actual" wars.
I fear we are already past a point where democratic process could stop it. I think by now it would require almost an actual revolt from U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and that it would be bloody, and that part of the military engineering being studied is exactly how much civilians will tolerate before being pushed to the point of revolt.
As long as you can watch Netflix on your iPad and put it out of your mind, then while it might ruffle your feathers, you won't actually take action that could jeopardize your creature comforts. Even things like Occupy Wall Street seem like they are more data collection opportunities than anything else. "OK, so they will protest via X, Y, and Z, but too few of them can be pushed to do A, B, or C for us to care."
It's a very depressing feeling. In the meantime, just like everyone else, I have to worry about money, family, life goals, comforts, health, and all my biases push me to ignore the military industrial conflict, because already giving it maybe 1/100th of my overall bandwidth is exceedingly depressing. Something close to 40% of the country believes in young earth creationism. Open up to a highly-visited YouTube video and scroll down to the comments and behold the inanity of how we use our time and what our priorities are.
How could enough people possibly coordinate beliefs and actions around humanity-affirming rebukes of the military industrial complex? Of course they won't, so then I guess I'd better put my brain towards how to live in a world where they won't, which is too depressing to think about... and the cycle continues.
I'm sure it has been articulated even earlier than the early 1900s. It's just goes on and on.
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-- "The Curse of Chalion", by Lois McMaster Bujold
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http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say-War/dp/1568583850
It was written by a leftist and libertarian/paleoconservative working together, so you will likely find something you love and something you hate in it, as with all good books.
I very much regret my early support for the Iraq war.
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Some aspects of it's stance, like home territory limited military presence and exclusive zones of interest are simply obsolete in an era of ICBMs and satellites.
For some context and general description of sentiment in the 30s:
https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists-be...
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-isol...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower's_farewell_address(Replying to PARENT post)
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Hasn't this global influence played a huge part in maintaining USA as a global superpower ?
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It also gladens my heart just to see my favorite Marine, Smedley Butler, get some "air time". It does dissapoint me that so many in the comments are making escuses for war as a profit or r&d center, or for war crimes prosecutions of what are essentially pawns on a grander chessboard.
In the Marine Corps, a lot of people have a hardon for Chesty Puller, but the phrase I used to use is "If you like Chest more than Smedley you do the country and the Corps a disservice." Why? Because not only did Smedley Butler wake up and realize the true nature of the part he played, but he spoke out against it, and beyond that, something I havent seen mentioned yet but something I think is of the utmost importance is his thwarting of the business plot. His convressional hearing testimony is vital to understanding the modern racket of war, and now we have the unredacted version, (though still not his full testimony, because it was heavily edited before even entering the record). If you havent read the unredacted testimony, I highly suggest it.
All that being said, war indeed is a racket, and it continues to be. The WFA (waste fraud and abuse) I saw in Iraq by contractors is barely the icing on the racket cake. There is a reason that something like the richest three counties in the US are in Virginia. The true racket though, is much larger than the contractor world, and primarily involves banking and resource oriented interests.
I spent a long time voraciously reading anything I thought could help me understand the bigger geostrategic/political chessboard, and my primary conclusion about the wars were that resource wars are on the horizon, and the wars were destabilizing measures designed to contain China and Russia by prevention of resource pipelines being built to them. Take a look at the maps of resources and their pipelines...
The other factor is that the traditional nation state actor threat model is being upended by texhnology, to the point that the military industrial congressional complex isadjusting very quickly.
My primary problem with this is how much the people of the US have been lied to and misled. If the United States has some interest in destabilizing an area, I would prefer that this just be said and the case be made outright, instead of sending young dumb warriors like myself to die for causes they dont understand and are lied to about. You want to know where I feel like the primary failure lies at? Every O-5 and above officer who just went along with it and didnt pushback against the Cheney, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Rumsfield bunch of Chicago school Straussian neocons backed by Kissinger and Brezenski. When you cant tell me what my fucking objective is, how can I be expected to accomplish it?
In truth, where we are headed currently is a return to the tripolar world, but in this move, I think we will never fully understand the almost complete subversion of our government that has happened at the behest of the globalists. Smedley Butler caught a glimpse of the beast and had the courage to fight against it openly. He will continue to be my favorite Marine until I die.
Oh, and for any of you touting the economic benefits of war, I hope you never are on the ground on either side when that benefit is being extracted by blood and corruption...
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http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwa...
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We have been warned by many about the military industrial complex, yet, it doesn't sink in.
Our current president was elected on promises of ending these wars and somehow he will go down in history as the champion of military occupation and perpetuating conflicts in places we don't belong.
Truth is that peace doesn't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of industry, the difference is that where is the industry? It used to be that the US would at least benefit from the industry through employment and tax revenue, but what if the production is no longer in the US? Who benefits then? I can tell you with accuracy who doesn't ..