War Is A Racket – Major General Smedley Butler
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
Strong stuff, indeed, and consider the source: a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner and Marine Corps general. Hardly a pantywaist . . .
The excerpt is from the end of the 4th and penultimate chapter: the whole “book” won’t take long to read, but it’s quite informative.
And then you’ll be ready to read Twain’s War Prayer.
War is a Racket was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., New York. It was condensed in Reader’s Digest as a book supplement, with an introduction by Lowell Thomas, who praised Butler’s “…moral as well as physical courage… ”
Hans Schmidt, in his 1987 biography of Butler, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History, offers the following assessment: “Much of War is a Racket was stock antiwar, anti-imperialist idiom, part of an American tradition dating back to the eighteenth century. Butler’s particular contribution was his recantation, denouncing war on moral grounds after having been a warrior hero and spending most of his life as a military insider. The theme remained vigorously patriotic and nationalistic, decrying imperialism as a disgrace rooted in the greed of a privleged few.” — from Scuttlebutt and small chow.