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    War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
    Unavailable
    War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
    Unavailable
    War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
    Ebook216 pages2 hours

    War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

    By Smedley Darlington Butler, Jesse Ventura, David Talbot and Cindy Sheehan

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler collected an award cabinet full of medals for his battlefield bravery. But perhaps his bravest act of all was to declare, after his retirement in the early 1930s, who was really winning (and losing) during the bloody clashes.

    It was business interests, he revealed, who commercially benefited from warfare. War Is a Racket is the title of the influential speech Butler delivered on a tour across the United States, as well the expanded version of the talk that was later published in 1935and is now reprinted here. This seminal piece of writing rings as true today as it did during Butler’s lifetime.

    In his introduction, Jesse Ventura reviews Butler’s original writings and relates them to our current political climateexplaining how right he was, and how wrong our current system is. With an insightful new foreword by Salon.com founder David Talbot, this portable reference will appeal to anyone interested in the state of our country and the entire world.

    Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse Publishing
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9781510704282
    Unavailable
    War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

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    Reviews for War Is a Racket

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    • 5/5
      The only book on antiwar that matters.
    • 4/5
      A short condemnation of war by a man who spent his life fighting wars. Smedley demonstrates the high public cost and resultant high business profits of war, giving many examples of US companies which greatly increased their profits during WW1. He also describes the waste and corruption inherent in military spending.

      Smedley makes the amusing (from a detached perspective) observation that in WW1 the US cleverly replaced recruitment bonuses with medals. Giving soldiers medals for service was much cheaper than giving money, which was the norm in the US Civil War. He also points out that between taxes and bonds many enlisted soldiers effectively received no salary.

      Far less amusingly, Smedley describes how in 1916, a delegation from the allies visited President Wilson and bluntly told the president that the allies would lose the war, and thus no be able to repay the six billion dollars they owed to the USA. This was the galvanising motion for US involvement.

      War = $ is the message of this book.
    • 5/5
      The pieces that make up this book were first published about 70 years ago. Butler was a highly decorated Marine Brigadier General who was involved in many military expeditions in the early 20th century to countries like Haiti, China and Cuba. After retiring, he exposed a corporate/fascist plot to seize the White House right after Franklin Roosevelt became President. After that, he began to speak out about the real motives behind America's military actions--profit.Just before World War I, the profit margin of the average American corporation was in the single digits (6%, 8%, perhaps 10% profit yearly). Then why, when the war came, did that same profit margin skyrocket to hundreds, or even thousands of percent? The author also mentions several cases of companies who sold the US Government totally useless items. One company sold Uncle Sam 12 dozen 48-inch wrenches. The problem is that there was only one nut large enough for those wrenches; it holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. The wrenches were put on freight cars and sent all around America to try and find a use for them. When the war ended, the wrench maker was about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. The parallels with today are too numerous to mention.The next time war is declared, and conscription is on the horizon, Butler proposes a limited national plebiscite on whether or not America should go to war. But the voting should be limited only to those of conscription age, those who will do the actual fighting and dying. Also, one month before anyone is conscripted, all of American business and industry who profits from war should be conscripted, from weapons makers to international banks to uniform makers. All employees of those companies, from the CEO down to the assembly line worker, should have their salary cut to equal the base pay of the soldier who is fighting, and dying, to improve their bottom line. Let's see how long the war fever lasts. Also, go to a VA hospital to see the real aftermath of war.This isn't so much an antiwar book as it is an isolationist book. The separate pieces were published in a time when many Americans felt that getting involved in another European war that had nothing to do with America, was a terrible idea. The author certainly pulls no punches. This book is very highly recommended, especially for those who think that war is a clean videogame where no one really gets hurt. It gets two strong thumbs up.
    • 5/5
      A very concise summation on the potential for corruption in the use of the military, particularly when military policy is wedded to corporate interests. Butler's statements are very powerful, particularly becuase of his personal experience on the subject.
    • 5/5
      A classic exposé of war profiteering written by the most decorated Marine of his time, Major General Smedley Butler. The author, through a highly qualified argument supported by facts, thoroughly discounts the moral and ideological justification for war and concentrates on the geopolitical factors that actually motivate the cause for war. He was one of the first Americans to really bring the economic implications of war to the forefront of the public conscience. In War is a Racket Butler “names names” and lays out in wonderfully blunt detail how the American “military machine” was used to the benefit of wealthy American industrialists. He noted how proponents of war typically call on God as a supporter of the cause and how they embellish the mission as one of liberation and the spreading of freedom, but that these people tend to shy away from discussing the economic details of military ventures. In short, this book, though small, is an inspirational foundation for all anti-war arguments in our current times, a firsthand account of a story that tragically keeps repeating itself.