War is a Racket: U.S. Blood Money

War is a Racket: U.S. Blood Money

Warnings About the Military Industrial Complex

In 1935, Major General Smedley D. Butler, a highly decorated U.S. Marine, boldly declared in his book, “War is a Racket,” that war is primarily a tool for profit, allowing the few at the top to profit off of the lives of the poor used as cannon fodder.

Then nearly three decades later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned of the growing influence of the “military-industrial complex.” He feared that the massive machine of military industry that arose during WWII would end up being able to influence lawmakers, and thus foreign policy, and would have a hunger for death that would never be satiated.