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Original Title:	War is a Racket
ISBN:	0922915865 (ISBN13: 9780922915866)
Edition Language:	English

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

Smedley D. Butler

Paperback | Pages: 79 pages

Rating: 4.29 | 3545 Users | 372 Reviews

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Major General Smedley D. Butler was a military hero of the first rank, the winner of two Medals of Honour, a true 'fighting marine' whose courage and patriotism could not be doubted. Yet he came to believe that the wars in which he and his men had fought and bled and died were all pre-planned conflicts, designed not so much to defend America as to bloat the balance sheets of US banks and corporations.

War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare.

After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., of New York. The booklet was also condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, the "as told to" author of Butler's oral autobiographical adventures, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".

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Title	:	War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Author	:	Smedley D. Butler
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	First Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 79 pages
Published	:	August 1st 2003 by Feral House (first published 1935)
Categories	:	Politics. History. Nonfiction. War. Military Fiction. Philosophy

Rating About Books War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

Ratings: 4.29 From 3545 Users | 372 Reviews

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I'm just not sure how to rate this book, so I put it in the middle category of three stars. It is an odd little read and while you agree with some of the author's assumptions, others are contradictory. Written by a Major General in the Marines who won two Medals of Honor in WWI, there is no doubt that he knows of what he speaks as far as war is concerned. However, the fact that large companies and individuals reaped fortunes from the war, although somewhat disturbing, is a part of free trade and

Info: Major General Smedley ButlerSmedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.blurb about the author - During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal

Incredible. It reminded me of some of Orwell's essays.

What Butler saw in his day certainly lives on in ours; young men and women being sent off to fight for a cause that isn't what they think it is, profit masquerading as patriotism, men stuffing their wallets off a war that costs them nothing while shattered minds and bodies pay everything for nothing in return. Butler's manner is very approachable, like an old man at a fireside, but this old man has the edperience to back up his words. We would do well to heed his counsel.

General Butler's tract from 1935 is dated in many ways - his isolationist views are of an earlier time; he expected a military alliance between France and Russia in the 1930s; and he underestimated the danger (and evil) posed by the Japanese Empire's fascist regime. Nonetheless, General Butler's detailed, quantitative critique of war profiteering and the corruption he witnessed as a Marine is damning. He makes a convincing argument that war is abhorrent, save for the people making money off it.

Is War a Racket?'For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket'. I have been told 'This was the "war to make (America) safe (from Terrorism)." No mentioned to (us), as we marched away, that (our) going and (our) dying would mean huge war profits'.As a soldier I have to agree with almost everything that Gen. Smedley Butler, a two time Medal of Honor winner has to say in this book. He wrote this book over 70 years ago, frustrated at how the US goes to war. I have to

An important message that must be heard. It's a little sad that in our culture it seems only a two-time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor can say something like this and be taken seriously, but that's the world we live in. On another note I felt a little disappointed that my copy of this book was only 35 pages long. I presume that other versions of this book are supplemented with other writing by Butler, but 35 pages??? That's not a book, that's an op-ed.