>
>Carrol
>
>P.S. Have any of you ever read what Major General Smedley Butler (the
>most decorated marine in the history of the corps) had to say in his
>memoirs about his military service? I'll look it up.

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service ... and during that period
I spent most of my time being a high class muscle man for Big Business, for
Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

Quoted in _Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions
of American Military History_, Hans Schmidt, The University Press of Kentucky,
1987.

Butler also wrote a book where he drew analogies between external imperialism
and internal organized crime, _War is a Racket_, in 1935.

Note however that he always remained an advocate of a strong national defense,
and resistance to external aggression; his objections were to
imperialism, whether
practised by this country, or any other. He did not make the assumption that
only American (or given the period, British) actions could constitute
imperialism.