GANGSTER CAPITALISM
Words of a radical peacenik? According to Mike Ferner - the coordinator of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy - that's true only if a Marine Corps Major General - General Smedley Butler - qualifies as such. And it hasn't been just Butler who has felt this way, and admitted as much: for example, President Dwight Eisenhower, Admiral Hyman Rickover and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara also came to this way of thinking in the "twilight years" of their lives.
But Butler - in a kind of "Final Act of Contrition" shortly before his death - actually named names and exposed those for whom "the American way of war" really works. He wrote:
"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys (i.e., the Rockefeller-Lodge nexus - today known as Citibank) 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 (now a part of Halliburton) in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies (i.e., the United Fruit Company now known as Chiqita Brand) in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
Indeed, according to Ferner, Butler acknowledged that he'd spent most of his 33 years in the Marines as nothing more than -
"... a high class muscle man for Big Business, Wall Street, and the Bankers."
In short, according to Butler,
"I was a racketeer and a gangster for capitalism."
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