The General Who Called War a Racket

The most decorated Marine in American history spent thirty-three years executing the racket. He named it in 1935.

The most decorated Marine in American history called war a racket.

Smedley Butler retired in 1931 as a Major General. He had served thirty-three years in the Marine Corps, been wounded in action, and received the Medal of Honor twice — for Veracruz in 1914 and Fort Rivière, Haiti, in 1915. By the standards the service uses, he was as much a warrior as the Corps had produced.

In 1935 he published War Is a Racket — a fifty-one-page pamphlet that named what he had spent thirty-three years executing. War is a racket, he wrote, in which a few make profit while the many pay the bill. The someone who profits writes the rules. The someone who pays is told the rules are for his own good.

The pamphlet was the second strike. The first was 1934. In November of that year Butler testified to a congressional committee that a group of Wall Street operatives had approached him the previous summer, offering money and a coup, and asking him to lead a march on Washington against the Roosevelt administration. He refused. He went to Congress instead. The committee’s final report, issued February 1935, confirmed substantial portions of what he had said.

He died June 21, 1940 — eighty-six years ago yesterday. War Is a Racket has not gone out of print since.

Peace Racket was born on Memorial Day. The most decorated Marine in American history named the racket that runs the wars the day was made to remember.

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Butler’s pamphlet has not been out of print since 1935. Peace Racket, Volume I traces the line of witness it sits inside. On Kindle [Link].