War Is a Racket by Smedley Butler ~ Full Audiobook [history]

War Is a Racket by Smedley Butler audiobook. Genre: history War Is a Racket is Smedley D. Butler's blunt, fast-moving indictment of modern warfare as a business enterprise disguised as patriotism. Drawing on his career as a decorated U.S. Marine Corps major general, Butler speaks as an insider who has seen interventions and campaigns up close, and he argues that the true winners of war are rarely the soldiers who fight it. In vivid, plain language, he traces how bankers, arms makers, and major industries can prosper from mobilization, contracts, debt, and wartime price controls, while ordinary citizens pay in taxes, inflation, and grief. Butler challenges listeners to look past slogans and recruiting posters to the machinery that sells war to the public, then lays out practical proposals aimed at stripping profit from conflict and forcing democratic accountability before troops are sent abroad. Part memoir, part political warning, and part call to action, this short classic confronts the uneasy relationship between power, money, and national sacrifice, and asks what it would take to make war truly the last resort. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:12:39) Chapter 02 (00:30:51) Chapter 03 (00:43:54) Chapter 04 (00:53:35) Chapter 05 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices