War Is A Racket by Major General Smedley Butler (1935) A Review by David Edwards Smedley Darlington Butler was born in 1881. He was a Major General in the US Marine Corps, and witnessed the horrors of the First World War first-hand. He retired in 1931, ran as a Republican Candidate for Senate in 1932, and died in a Philadelphia Naval Hospital in 1940. He was awarded two congressional medals of honor, one for the capture of Vera Cruz in Mexico, in 1914; the other for the capture of Fort Riviere in Haiti, in 1917. He also received the distinguished service medal in 1919. In the 1930s General Butler made a nationwide tour, giving his speech 'War Is A Racket'. The speech and accompanying booklet were so well recieved that he wrote a longer version as a small book. A book which has since gained notoriety as an honest appraisal of modern warfare and the growth of an industry driving it. The text provides an honest analysis of war profiteering from the misery of the First World War. The overall observation is that the beneficiaries of war are the corporations who supply essential items, and seemingly useless items, in their schemes and scams which he frequently saw in action to further squeeze those profit margins higher with a callous disregard for waste and for humanity at large. There are corporations and financial interests who will back both sides of a war to maximize profits and benefit from conflict. Although this is not news, it is important to realise this fact when considering the origins of seemingly politically motivated wars, which are nothing more than military enforcement of corporate interests. An even more cynical but realistic viewpoint is that war is big business. The people who benefit from war keep themselves as far away from the frontline as possible, sending others to fight for what their hot air and harsh words have wrought. This is far more apparent and obvious in the time we find ourselves living in now, with the escalation of conflict on the Geo-political stage. "How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it means to go hungry in a rat infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire new territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of the blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak it out. ..." The adoption of the Napoleonic system of 'decorating' soldiers instead of hiring them happened in the US military towards the end of the Civil War. Instead of sharing war profits with soldiers, the medal became a way of rewarding soldiers. The idea of conscription also proved to be a much more profitable way getting the labour initially than the profit hazard of bargaining for services. In the First World War, propaganda via the threat of shame led many men to their deaths, or the loss of an essential piece of their humanity. "That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious." Even when the wars are done, there is profit to be made. To the victor, go the spoils. To the defeated, a bill in the form of reparations for years, even decades to come... Butler’s three main steps to smash the war racket are laid out as follows: 1. We must take the profit out of war. 2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be a war. 3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. Unfortunately this is not the state of the world we live in today. The global financial and geopolitical landscape is very similar to a century ago. The slow march of death to the beat of the war drums continues. Profits will inevitably made, but at what cost? When we see recent public relations campaigns to end sexual violence in conflict zones, the obvious approach is symptomatic rather than causal. Of course it is, there is no interest in stopping war, just an attempt to sanitise it. So the profits can flow, the horror becomes covert. Everybody at the top gets paid their share of the profits... War is a racket, and our maddened politicians will never say to hell with war. So we need to, we are on the brink of it.