War is a racket (edição 1984)

A polemic of course, but that's what you get. Short, and extra points for being important & insightful.

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No one should be allowed to advocate war
UNLESS they have read this book
AND enlist to serve in the front lines.
If you're going to talk the talk, walk the walk.

Ch 1: War Is A Racket
Ch 2: Who Makes The Profits?
Ch 3: Who Pays The Bills?
Ch4: How To Smash This Racket!
Ch 5: To Hell With War!

Butler (1881-1940) was a U.S. Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler later become an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences. He exposed the Business Plot, a military coup planned by a group of wealthy industrialists to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U.S. government. (Turned out they didn't need a coup. The US government is currently owned by mega-billionaires and their corporate special interests. With the full support of the GOP & DNC party leaders of today.) By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. Butler is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. -wiki. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/?

Recommended Reading:
War - What For? (1910) by George R. Kirkpatrick
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58266 ( )

We never learn. Over and over they fabricate emergencies and threats to stampede us into allowing the robber barons to profit astronomically from our idiotic inability to know the truth, How many times are we going to fall for the contrived attacks on our ships and soldiers. Tens of thousands of young men dead and maimed, but we just herd forward prodded by propaganda and the illusion of danger. All the while they profit and they profit big from the war and then, even more cynically, from the aftermath. For chrissakes wake the hell up. Resist. Organize. ( )

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. ( )

The only book on antiwar that matters. ( )