"Defeatocrats" like Major General Smedley Butler?
He likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who "ridiculed or
ignored" the rise of the Nazis in the 1930's and tried to appease
Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a "moral or
intellectual confusion" and fail to recognize the "new type of
fascism" represented by terrorists.
December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly
shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein.
According to declassified State Department memos detailing Mr.
Rumsfeld's Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the
subject of these crimes with his host. (Mr. Rumsfeld has since
claimed otherwise, but that is not supported by the documents, which
can be viewed online at George Washington University's National
Security Archive.) Within a year of his visit, the American mission
was accomplished: Iraq and the United States resumed diplomatic
relations for the first time since Iraq had severed them in 1967 in
protest of American backing of Israel in the Six-Day War.
Mr. Rumsfeld, a private citizen, he had been dispatched as an
emissary by the Reagan administration, which sought to align itself
with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam was already a notorious thug.
"Iraq is not overwhelmed by foreign terrorists," said the
congressman John Murtha in succinct rebuttal to the president's
speech. "It is overwhelmed by Iraqis fighting Iraqis." And with
Americans caught in the middle.
http://www.truthout
--------
Historical background:
Fascists planned a military coup against Roosevelt /the disloyal
American Legion
In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days,"
America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that
Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth
from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.
As 1932 became 1933, Morgan's spies learned that Roosevelt might be
considering more radical measures, ones that could take control of
America's most precious commodity--its sovereign credit-- away from
Wall Street and the London-based financial oligarchy who controlled
the Morgan interests.
Simultaneous with the Hitler coup in Germany, London-directed Morgan
and Mellon interests were involved in organizing an attempted
fascist coup in the United States against President Franklin
Roosevelt. The coup plot, slated for full activation by no later
than 1935, was exposed in Congressional testimony in November-
December 1934 by Marine hero, Major General Smedley Darlington
Butler (1881-1940). Earlier, in February 1933, these same networks
attempted the assassination of FDR, the failure of which led to the
``blown'' coup plot option.
http://members.
On the evening of Feb. 15, 1933 Roosevelt, who had been vacationing
in the Caribbean prior to his scheduled March 4 inauguration, landed
in Miami for political meetings. He arrived aboard the yacht of
Vincent Astor, of the British-dominated Astor financial interests. A
crowd of some 10,000 gathered near the waterfront, waiting to see
the President-elect. As FDR, speaking from the seat of an open car,
concluded brief remarks, several shots rang out. Five people on or
near the bandstand directly behind the President-elect were hit,
although FDR, miraculously, was not.
The coup plotters attempted to recruit Major General (MG) Smedley
Butler (twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor) to
lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who was
popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good reputation was
important to make the troops feel confident that they were doing the
right thing by overthrowing a democratically elected president (with
an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion).
However, this was a mistake: MG Butler was popular with the troops
because he identified with them. That is, he was a man of the
people, not the elite. When the plotters approached General Butler
with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along with
the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to Congress at the
right moment.
And what type of government would replace Roosevelt's New Deal?
MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend of
General Butler's:
"We need a fascist government in this country… to save the nation
from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we
have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it
are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could
organize a million men overnight."
If this sounds too fantastic to believe, we should remember that by
1933, the crimes of fascism were still mostly in the future, and its
dangers were largely unknown, even to its supporters. But in the
early days, many businessmen openly admired Mussolini because he had
used a strong hand to deal with labor unions, put out social unrest,
and get the economy working again, if only at the point of a gun.
Americans today would be appalled to learn of the many famous
millionaires back then who initially admired Hitler and Mussolini:
Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, John and Allen Dulles (who, besides
being millionaires, would later become Eisenhower's Secretary of
State and CIA Director, respectively)
the above list. They disavowed Hitler and Mussolini only after their
atrocities grew to indefensible levels.
At its January 1923 Convention, Commander-in-
Legion, Alvin Owsley endorsed Mussolini and Fascism:
http://www.dkosoped
MG Butler had even served for two years on special assignment as
police commissioner of Philadelphia in 1920s, where he fought the
rackets while respecting constitutionally guaranteed rights, only to
be hamstrung by partisan politics.
December 1929, speaking to veterans in Pittsburgh, he stated that in
his deployment in 1912 in Nicaragua, he had helped rig elections in
favor of the Wall Street-backed candidate. He was immediately called
on the carpet by Navy Secretary Charles Francis Adams, a man whose
name was later to appear on the Morgan preferred list of investors.
In August 1931, Butler, in a speech to the American Legion,
declared: ``I have spent 33 years ... being a high class muscle man
for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer for capitalism..
``I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico, and especially
Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1916. I helped make
Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City (Bank) boys to
collect revenue in. I helped rape half a dozen Central American
republics for the benefit of Wall Street.... In China, I helped see
to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested..
swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. I
might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was
operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three
continents..
To the dismay of the bankers who directed the Legion, Butler's
remarks were greeted with riotous applause.
Butler was an overt anti-fascist, who in 1931, openly denounced
Mussolini as a murderer and thug, and warned against signing
treaties with him. When the Italian government filed a protest, all
hell broke loose: the Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, cabled a
personal apology, on behalf of Herbert Hoover, to ``Il Duce,'' while
Butler, the commandant of the Quantico Marine base at the time, was
placed under arrest and told that he was to be court-martialed by
direct order of the President of the United States, with the full
approval of Navy Secretary Adams.
The plans for the court martial provoked a tremendous outpouring of
support for Butler. The anti-fascist local press charged that the
Hoover administration was kowtowing to the ``thug'' Mussolini and
throwing up for sacrifice America's most distinguished military
figure. Franklin Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, and a
friend of Butler's dating from FDR's days as Secretary of the Navy,
worked to help the General, and spoke out against what was being
done. Hoover and Adams were forced to back down: the court martial
was cancelled, and Butler was given only a mild reprimand. He
refused, however, to retract his statement.
http://members.
Coup members:
Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of
the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to
General Butler.
Irenee Du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of
the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute
the plot.
Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group
of J.P. Morgan banks.
William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a
central plotter of the coup.
John Davis - Former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior
attorney for J.P. Morgan.
Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was
a former governor of New York and a codirector of the American
Liberty League.
John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former
chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob would
become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a
high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey,
William Colby and John McCone.
Robert Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and
stockbrokers.
http://www.huppi.
---------
Comment: We need to demand a US Army fort named after MG Butler vs.
Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Chaffee
--------
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