This talk from 1933 aged poorly. America's initial lack of intervention in WW2 resulted in Pearl Harbor and German conquest of most of Europe. Smedley Butler can stay forgotten as a footnote in the dusty annals of history.
Europe's refusal to follow Wilson's Fourteen Points plan and instead punish Germany as hard as possible is what created WW2 in the first place. Exactly how many of Europe's messes was the US supposed to help clean up before saying "No more"?
Smedley Butler can stay forgotten as a footnote in the dusty annals of history.
The legacy of the most decorated marine in history will live on longer than yours or mine.
Personally, I'd like to just say thanks!
And hope you stick around to prevent us creating a new mess.. I think we'll be happy to purchase a few useless F35s in exchange :)
People like simplistic arguments for WW2. But the truth is that the terms given to Germany weren't that hash, certainly not as harsh as the terms imposed by Germany on Russia and Romania in the separate peace treaties before the end of the war.
There's also no point in positing counter-factual scenarios regarding WWII. If you want to imagine a world where the US rushed in and "saved" Europe early and prevents Pearl Harbor, you also have to imagine a world where US domestic support for Germany ultimately wins out and we end up supporting them.
But yes, colonial conflict before after WWII is probably more of a racket.
That said, the cold war didn't stayed cold -- which was nice. Credit NATO (maybe), to be fair NATO is probably also a racket for the military industrial complex (by making countries buy more F35s for example).
Maybe except the intervention in Korea
This is a very valid point. Maybe worded badly but a perfectly valid thing to point out.
There is a clear contradiction here: In Democracies, public opinion does matter. It isn’t 100% capitalism. The capitalists might be able to get away with some excursions here and there, but when it comes to invading Europe and Japan, public opinion still mattered. The lack of public support was a major factor in why USA did not engage sooner, Pearl Harbor put it over the top definitively.
I didn’t read anything into his speech about being against going to war under all situations.
The Nazi war machine was identical to the group of gangsters outlined in this talk: Integrated capitalist warfare by way of industrialists. His point applies perfectly well to that situation. It’s exactly what happened.
Once one side begins the process, there wasn’t much that could be done, have to respond in kind.
Plenty of them were selling products to Germany, including many that would end up being used by the German war machine. If the US entered the war against Germany, all that would have had to stop.