From The Smedley Butler Brigade-Veterans For Peace-"Racketeers For Peace"
The "'racketeer" reference is from a statement by General Smedley Butler who after a lifetime of military service as a Marine from grunt to the highest levels of generalship concluded that "war is a racket"-you can find the rest of his statement with those words pominently in it at Wikipedia by Googling his name.
© Bob Wire
The "'racketeer" reference is from a statement by General Smedley Butler who after a lifetime of military service as a Marine from grunt to the highest levels of generalship concluded that "war is a racket"-you can find the rest of his statement with those words pominently in it at Wikipedia by Googling his name.
RACKETEERS FOR PEACE
For Sev, Pat and Comrades
November 16, 2017
Since Cain killed Abel countless years ago,
The world has suffered violence and war
As personal and national ego
Push us to murder and make fields of gore.
A second fundamental motive--fear,
Convinces us to fight in self-defense
When great, imagined menaces appear
To threaten us, with or without good evidence.
Demonic greed will often overrule
God-given reason, urge men to ignore
The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule,
Especially with assists from Emperor.
Patriotism is a shibboleth
That leads poor sheep to slaughterhouse of war,
Whose wealthy stockholders, merchants of death,
Gain gold beyond the dreams of Caesar's whore.
Then countless brave benighted mothers' sons
And fathers' precious daughters fight and die,
Misguided myrmidons and amazons,
Whose needless deaths, most nations glorify.
Poor troops trapped in the labyrinth of war
May relish their adventure for a time,
Until they meet the raging Minotaur
Who murders even warriors in their prime.
That slaughterhouse, that labyrinth, impact
Millions of citizens, both near and far,
Who never plot or fear nor feel attacked
And want no part of useless, senseless war,
But suffer, nonetheless, the insane rage
That shatters lives and cities when it comes,
As mindless armies and armadas wage
War--paragon of pandemoniums.
"War is a racket," Smedley Butler said:
"A few men profit while the many pay."
Their costs of business are the masses dead,
Maimed, grieving, homeless--worse in every way.
If General Butler could be here tonight,
He'd recognize and decorate his sons:
Veterans for Peace, determined to fight
The fatal folly of more bombs and guns.
We need to raise a racket for release
From deadly, bankrupting racket of war.
I cast my lot with you brave Vets for Peace,
Who've learned the hard way what's worth fighting for.
Two champions of peace for humankind--
Pat Scanlon, indefatigable man,
And Severyn Bruyn, inestimable mind--
Campaign for peace in every way they can.
These Veterans for Peace have gifts of Orpheus
To soothe the savage heart and pacify the mind:
Composer Sev, bold singer Pat, inspire us
To leave the bloody, so-called "arts of war" behind.
We comrades honor them as Racketeers
For Peace--the kind of citizens we need,
Who work to counter manufactured fears,
Defy the deadly enterprise of greed.
We strive with these prime paladins for peace,
Against the misled partisans of war,
To counter warmongers who want to fleece
The flock, and butcher some, to profit more.
We toast their leadership and zeal for peace,
The end of war´s destruction, death and grief.
Let patriotic theft and murder cease;
Unmask "heroic" war--killer and thief.
Congratulations, Sev, and kudos, Pat,
You guys, politically so incorrect!
May all, like you, heed Smedley's caveat:
The curse of war forevermore reject!
You led us in the church and in the streets,
Brave Racketeers for Peace who boldly say:
War victories are actually defeats.
There has to be…. Peace IS the better way!
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