Smedley Butler

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. Smedley Darlington Butler was a United States 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 and France in World War I. Butler later became better known an outspoken critic of U.S. wars and their consequences. He also blew the whistle on the infamous an alleged fascist conspiracy to overthrow the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration of the United States government.

Butler became an icon of the anti-war movement with his speech (and later book) War is a Racket, a scathing critique of the corporate interests that lay behind the imperialist wars he had fought.

War is a Racket
After retiring from military service, Butler became widely known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering, U.S. military adventurism, and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States.

In December 1933, Butler toured the country with James E. Van Zandt to recruit members for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). He described their effort as "trying to educate the soldiers out of the sucker class." In his speeches, he denounced the Economy Act of 1933, called on veterans to organize politically to win their benefits, and condemned the FDR administration for its ties to big business. The VFW reprinted one of his speeches with the title "You Got to Get Mad" in its magazine Foreign Service. He said: "I believe in… taking Wall St. by the throat and shaking it up." He believed the rival veterans' group the American Legion was controlled by banking interests. On December 8, 1933, he said: "I have never known one leader of the American Legion who had never sold them out — and I mean it."

In addition to his speeches to pacifist groups, he served from 1935 to 1937 as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism. In 1935, he wrote the exposé titled 'War Is a Racket', a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare. His views on the subject are summarized in the following passage from the November 1935 issue of the socialist magazine Common Sense: