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Today’s reader recommended book is:

War Is a Racket by Smedley Butler

First published in 1935, this expose by former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Smedley D. Butler recounts his experiences as a gangster for capitalism, operating an official protection racket in Latin America and around the world on behalf of Wall Street. Butler’s candid analysis of American imperialism placed the blame for America’s foreign wars squarely on the millionaires and billionaires who made new fortunes out of World War I and America’s various colonial incursions, and recommended that American troops be prohibited from being deployed more than 200 miles from the U.S. border in order to prevent their future use as gangsters.

This edition also includes Butler’s five-part series “America’s Armed Forces,” which appeared in the magazine Common Sense between October 1935 and March 1936. The series allowed Butler to explore at greater length the rapid increase in the size and budgets of the American armed forces, the emergence of the military-industrial complex, the centralization of military control in the federal government, the growth of fascist ideology within the armed forces, and even the militarization of the police. With each of these problems having grown into a still more serious challenge today, Butler’s assessment remains forceful and surprisingly timely.

You can buy the book here (Amazon link).

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