Smedley Butler

Smedley Darlington Butler was born on July 30, 1881 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Raised by Quaker parents, young Smedley attended prestigious schools and excelled in athletics. Thirty-eight days before his seventeenth birthday, however, Smedley enlisted in the Marine Corps; war had just erupted with Spain and Smedley answered his government's call to arms. He remained in the military for the next thirty-four years, eventually earning the rank of Major General.

During his three-plus decades in the military Major General Butler saw action all over the world: the Philippines, China, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Haiti, and the European battlefields of World War I. To compliment his lengthy list of experiences, Butler earned himself sixteen awards, including not one but two Medals of Honor.

Three years after his retirement from active duty in 1931, Major General Butler stood before the United States Congress and told of a conspiracy to overthrow President Roosevelt. According to Butler, a group of businessmen and a large contingent of ex-soldiers were intending to stage a coup and establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler was privy to this information because he was supposedly asked by the plotters to lead the ex-soldiers. A Congressional Committee found that Butler's allegations were indeed credible, but in the end no one was prosecuted. And while newspapers and publications like Time scoffed at Butler's claims, modern historians believe that a plot actually existed; the plot, however, is believed to have been in its infancy and was never close to being carried out.

When he was not busy exposing fascist plots, the retired Major General traveled the country speaking out against war profiteering. His 1935 book War is a Racket details numerous examples of industrialists, like the du Ponts, who greatly profited from the carnage of war. Reflecting on his long and distinguished military career, Butler wrote:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and 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 benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Smedley Butler passed away on June 21, 1940 from an "incurable condition of the upper gastro-intestinal tract." And though Butler has largely disappeared from collective memory, his accusations against capitalism and the military-industrial complex are just as relevant today as they were in 1935.

"War is a racket.
It always has been.
It is conducted for the benefit of the very few,
at the expense of the very many."