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War Is a Racket (1933)

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Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#151

Post by elfexec »

aazaa wrote: post #17

> Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on wh…

> Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die... They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure.

Told by whom? Oh that's right, the news media. People really need to go look into why the NYTimes, WashingtonPost, Pulitzer's properties, Hearst's properties, etc were created and how their yellow journalism played into wars even to this day.

Also keep in mind, the biggest ( proportionally ) benefactor of war isn't defense contractors, it's the news industry.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/tucker-carlson-scores-highest-...

People forgot that WashingtonPost went bankrupt in the first half of the 1900s and the news industry was in danger of collapse. What saved the industry? War.

Keep in mind that the news industry, especially the NYTimes ( a company created by a banker ) editorial board, attacked Butler as a "hoaxer" ( aka conspiracy peddler ). How times change, but the propaganda remains the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

> Very strange how WWI makes almost no sense from today's perspective.

WW1 makes total sense. By WW1, the entire world had been conquered by European powers and America. Every piece of land on earth was under European/American control or influence. So european powers had no one left to fight but themselves.

> Every country was damaged either directly by the conflict, or indirectly through its protracted (and still ongoing) resolution.

Europe was in ruins and more importantly fractured. Go read TS Eliot's The Waste Land. It's partly about his angst of over a broken europe and the collapse of western civilization and the ultimate pointlessness of that war.

> It's the only war in living memory considered near universally "good" by those in the US.

It's considered good because propaganda tells us it's good. Propaganda tells us its good because we came out on top. But I don't see how a war with nukes and upwards of 120 million dead could be considered good. That's more dead than the worst pandemic in recent history - spanish flu which killed upwards of 100 million. I doubt anyone would say the spanish flu was "good".

> I'm doubtful our current reverence for WWII will stand the test of time.

Reverence of ww2 will be determined by who is in power. History, as all other propaganda, is written by those in power.

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#152

Post by UnFleshedOne »

jcranmer wrote: post #102
socialdemocrat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it is not a popular view but I think WWII was a major mistake. We could of course not have stopped Hitler's initial actions, but it was the West's choice to wage war against Hitler. I think that was a mistake. The rational was to keep Poland and the Czech republic free. However at the end of the war neither country was free. They had fallen under the Soviet sphere of influence. The goals they set hence failed.…

> We could of course not have stopped Hitler's initial actions Germany was not ready to fight a war in 1937, 1938, or even 1939, when it actually invaded Poland. Had the West actually responded to German aggression with a land assault, even as late as the actual invasion of Poland, then it's rather likely that the war could have been cleaned up before the Soviet Union would have invaded Poland. Furthermore, an approp…

I don't think decisive action was possible after WWI -- everybody still remembered the meatgrinder and what a web of defensive treaties led to.

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#153

Post by int_19h »

hpoe wrote: post #3

>War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. I'd add one more, when a genocidal meglomanic is intent on wiping out an entire race of people that I would say qualifies as one more reason. War is terrible tragic and should be avoided at almost any cost, but there is also evil in the…

I would agree that it qualifies. The problem is that none of the Allied countries in WW2 got involved for that reason. That a full-fledged genocide was going on, much less the true scope for it, became known only fairly late in the war.

And then you can look at events such as the Evian Conference before the war, where those same countries could have averted the worst of said genocide without firing a single bullet. But didn't, because they were hella racist themselves - as the famous quote from that conference went, "as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one". Or you can look at the polls - one such in US in 1939 had 53% of the respondents saying that "Jews are different and should be restricted". I don't know if there are any stats on how many American soldiers in that war were KKK members, but it would be an interesting study.

WW2 was a war over state interests, which themselves boil down to economic and political power of the elites. It was retconned into this glorious crusade of the Free World against the Evil Empire, and it was spectacularly successful because the Evil Empire turned out to be even more evil than the war propaganda painted it; but we should never forget that it is a post hoc justification! WW1 actually had very similar propaganda (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/otheringat...) - it just didn't hold up in retrospect, which is why our perception of it is so different today.

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#154

Post by zaroth »

Spooky23 wrote: post #60
aazaa wrote: post #17

> Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on wh…

WW1 and 2 were the same conflict. The apparent stupidity of WW1 is really a function of how accustomed we are to modern industry, communications, and some of the things hard-won by that conflict. End of the day, it was all about resources, and is no different than today’s conflicts, which boil down to oil on the supply and the control of money on the demand side.

Except now Iran shoots missiles at a US base in Iraq and the price of oil barely budged. Times have changed, and the US is much more energy independent. And over the next decade even more so as the EV revolution and renewable energy continue to dominate.

IMO the increasing irrelevance of the Middle East will continue to increase world peace and prosperity, at the expense of some truly awful regimes which will crumble.

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#155

Post by dragontamer »

jcranmer wrote: post #141
dragontamer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, how could Japan have turned even a decisive naval advantage into victory against the US? Erm, by conquering the Philippines, China, and Korea. Japan had no reason to invade the US proper, its only goal was conquest of the Asian continent. Japan did conquer the Philippines for a short time, before the US counter-attacked to recapture it. Japan had no reason to conquer the USA. Japan wanted to build the…

> If Japan won the Battle of Midway and finished off the US Pacific Fleet, Japan probably would have created its imperialist dream. US would have retreated from the Pacific, lost the Philippines, and focused on fighting Germany (winning at least in the Atlantic). You're making the same mistake the Japanese made in 1941. The Japanese assumed that they could kick the US really hard enough, steal a few things, and the U…

A well reasoned post. I think that's a fair argument.

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#156

Post by jcranmer »

int_19h wrote: post #150
jcranmer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US no longer has a foreign policy explicitly built on the protection of American commercial interests abroad. If you haven't noticed, we no longer invade countries (e.g., Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela) when they threaten to nationalize industries that the US has a large stake in. If you believe that the foreign policy is built on that premise, but that the government is lying about it, then the burden of proof is on yo…

Well, no, we don't invade them - we subsidize a coup in their country. It's much cheaper that way, when their own troops are performing occupation duties, paid for by the taxes of the people they occupy. And if those people revolt, then there's a "legitimate government" asking us to help them in a "police action" - not a war, God forbid! And then we train their troops and give them munitions. And if all that fails, t…

> And if those people revolt, then there's a "legitimate government" asking us to help them in a "police action" - not a war, God forbid! And then we train their troops and give them munitions. And if all that fails, then we send our troops to protect the "legitimate government".

And the last time this happened was... ?

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#157

Post by wedn3sday »

rayhendricks wrote: post #67
lacker wrote: post #32

His statements seem clear but upon further reflection they are not clear. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. Okay, so this was written in 1933. The obvious question to me is, would the author have supported US involvement in World War 2? I guess with Pearl Harbor, the US was attacked. But the Japanese at the time might have said that the…

The United States should not have embargoed Japan. The United stars should not have been involved in any of the world wars. Sweden has been neutral in all conflicts since 1814 and that has worked out quite well for them.

If the USA hadnt gotten involved in the European theater of WW2, and invested the required resources in the Manhattan project, its very likely that the Nazis would have gotten the bomb first and used it to beat the red army. This would have allowed Hitler to consolidate power throughout the continent before eventually invading England. Although Im a stanch opponent of the modern military adventurism of recent administrations, getting involved to cut down the rise of Hilters power was a huge positive for generations of Europeans (and probably the rest of the world).

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#158

Post by jcranmer »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #152
jcranmer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could of course not have stopped Hitler's initial actions Germany was not ready to fight a war in 1937, 1938, or even 1939, when it actually invaded Poland. Had the West actually responded to German aggression with a land assault, even as late as the actual invasion of Poland, then it's rather likely that the war could have been cleaned up before the Soviet Union would have invaded Poland. Furthermore, an approp…

I don't think decisive action was possible after WWI -- everybody still remembered the meatgrinder and what a web of defensive treaties led to.

> what a web of defensive treaties led to

Ironically, none of the countries in WWI were actually obliged to enter into the war by virtue of their treaties.

The Triple Alliance didn't kick in unless one of the parties was "without direct provocation on their part, [...] attacked or [...] engaged in a war with two or more Great Powers nonsignatory to the present treaty" (or Italy attacked by France alone). But France and Britain declared war after Germany did, so the "two or more" doesn't kick in. Not to mention that the "direct provocation" is an ample loophole for anyone wanting to wriggle out of the treaty (as Italy, in fact did).

The Triple Entente wasn't a single treaty. The Franco-Russian Alliance was the strongest, requiring France and Russia to attack Germany should Germany attack one of them or merely mobilize in response to any of the Triple Alliance mobilizing. But again, this is a defensive trigger, and Russia mobilized before Germany did [1], so the clause didn't kick in. The Anglo-French Entente was not backed by any military alliance treaty, nor was the Anglo-Russian Entente. The Treaty of London merely guaranteed Belgian neutrality, and did not oblige anyone to enter into war against someone who violated Belgian neutrality.

For extra irony, in WWII, Britain and France went to war against Germany in defense of Poland, with whom they did not have a binding defensive treaty, but not in defense of Czechoslovakia, with whom France did.

[1] We know now that Germany actually decided its full mobilization before Russia did, but held back on announcing it just long enough to have the Russian mobilization announce first. In the event, France actually did not mobilize until after Germany mobilized against it, the German military having convinced Kaiser Wilhelm that mobilizing against only Russia was impossible.

Re: War Is a Racket (1933)

#160

Post by scoopitywoop »

aazaa wrote: post #17

> Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on wh…

> Had those young men simply decided to do nothing rather than join, the world would have been a better place.

Words cannot express how disappointed I am with people who say things like this.

Assuming you believe that your country's political system is not worth overthrowing, then serving your country is an honorable act, and people who have served should not be criticized for taking on the burden that is service. Quite the opposite.

Now if your political system is beyond repair and unsalvageable through reform, then sure, service is not honorable.

It's unfortunate that so many of my fellow citizens seem to take the intellectually lazy way out: Criticize the choice to serve, but be unwilling to reform/overthrow their government. This line of thinking is so widespread, it's truly disheartening.

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