War is a Racket – Abolish Corporate Personhood Comments by Ira Harritt, KC AFSC Program Coordinator, 8/9/10 Move to Amend Rally, KCMO Seventy years ago, Smedley Butler, perhaps the most highly decorated Marine Corps general, disturbed by his participation in various military interventions, declared that WAR IS A RACKET. And wrote a short book by that title. It begins… 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. In his farewell address Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 warned: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. If to this threat, we add the ability of military contractors and war profiteers to make unlimited contributions to campaigns, we have a blueprint for disaster. Already military contracts are divided up among congressional districts so that the corporations have the greatest possible political influence, addicting our nation to war profiteering jobs. Congress is paid off. University chairs are funded. Media conglomerates are owned, so that the echo chamber reverberates: War! War! War! But the sound has a different meaning for military contractors. For them it means: Profits! Profits! Profits! So far in 2010 military-industrial complex contracts have totaled $121, 333,967,747. So far 2010 defense lobbying has totaled over $70 million; down from about $150 million in 2008. The legal responsibility of corporations is to maximize profits. The death of one person or the deaths of a million people are not part of the equation. War is profitable. Profits can fund election campaigns, lobby for more war and lead us down the path to greater and greater disasters and inhumanity. Taking away corporate personhood would help to remove the profit motive wasting our nation’s resources on war and taking the lives of our brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters… The words of Dwight D. Eisenhower still ring true today, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Unlimited lobbying by the military industrial complex will only bring us endless war and death. We must take the rights of personhood away from corporations. .