If you don’t understand that war is business, then you don’t understand war. If we follow the money, we’ll discover an endless stream of private contractors.
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
– Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history
Published on Oct 27, 2012
BBC Panorama Special, June 10, 2008.