PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
General Smedley D. Butler was born in West Chester, Pa., in 1881. Educated at Haverford School he went on to become a Major General in the United States Marine Corps and was awarded two Congressional Medals of Honour. He received a Distinguished Service Medal in 1919 and retired from the army in 1931, after which he became the director of the Department of Safety and Republican Candidate for Senate, whilst working as a lecturer. He died in 1940.
There is little likelihood one will encounter a putdown and discounting of armed service, while questioning the reason for it, by a top experienced commander, anywhere within a light year of Marine General Smedley D. Butler's WAR IS A RACKET. And there is utterly nothing comparable to the grim anthology of photographs devoted to the unspeakable hideousness of the bloody gore of modern - since Napoleonic times - warfare, THE HORROR OF IT. The American public recoiled from these two works when they were published, in close sequence, two generations ago... We can hope that this dual masterpiece at hand, in quite a different context, does a better job of reducing the level of ignorance. -- James J. Martin Butler is scathing in his description of how the U.S. government wasted the lives of those soldiers who died but also of those who survived... A stunning condemnation of U.S. militarism and it ends with a demand that rings true down to today - 'To hell with war.' -- Ashley Smith, Socialist Worker America had seen its own attempt at a Fascist coup. Why, then, is this incident in U.S. history not better known? Why don't children learn in school about the plot to seize the United States government?... The time has obviously come for Smedley Butler to have his moment in the sun. Butler's attack on the military-industrial complex does more than expose war for the racket it is: It also gives the antiwar movement unmatched credibility. -- Ken Mondschein, corporatemofo.com
