“War Is a Racket”
TRANSCEND VIDEOS, 16 Mar 2026
Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler – TRANSCEND Media Service
War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book, by Smedley D. Butler, a retired US Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his extensive military experience, Butler discusses how business interests commercially benefit, profiteering from warfare. He made a nationwide U.S. tour in the early 1930s giving this speech.
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, nicknamed “Old Gimlet Eye” (30 Jul 1881 – 21 Jun 1940) was a senior US Marine Corps officer who fought in both the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Wikipedia
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Tags: Capitalism, Demilitarization, Economics, Elites, Military Industrial Complex, Military Supremacy, Smedley Butler, US Military, War, War Is a Racket
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 16 Mar 2026.
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2 Responses to ““War Is a Racket””
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Many activities are “Rackets”. Many industrial and other commercial concerns ar Rackets.
But to call it “War Racket” is too simple and somehow indecent, after Smedley earned so much money and honours thanks to wars.
I replace “war” for “Official Murder”, (Death and Destruction) the most immoral in the world.
All due to brainwashed humanity, who call this activity “Defense”.
Response to “War Is a Racket” – TMS
Major General Smedley D. Butler’s War Is a Racket remains one of the most courageous moral interventions of the 20th century. His honesty in exposing the machinery of profit-driven warfare still reverberates with unsettling clarity today. He spoke not only as a soldier, but as a conscience awakened, one who witnessed firsthand how the engines of conflict are fueled less by human necessity and more by commercial appetite.
His message challenges us to recognise that war is not an accident of history; it is a constructed enterprise, engineered, incentivized, and sustained by networks of power that place profit above human life. The military, industrial complex he described has since evolved into a global architecture of armaments, surveillance, and strategic fear. Butler’s testimony therefore transcends its era. It is a timeless call to moral vigilance.
But beyond the geopolitical critique lies a deeper spiritual truth: whenever human beings are coaxed into violence, our natural biophotonic coherence, our inner light, becomes fragmented. War thrives on this decoherence. It requires the dimming of empathy, the distortion of truth, and the systematic suppression of our innate capacity to recognise one another as reflections of the same cosmic source.
Peace, conversely, is the restoration of biophotonic harmony.
It is the alignment of human consciousness with the sacred luminosity that animates all life. When we choose compassion over conquest, when we speak truth to militaristic power, when we refuse to be instrumentalised by the interests of the elite, our inner light becomes stronger, clearer, and more coherent.
From a spiritual perspective, Butler’s work is not merely an anti‑war statement.
It is a reminder that:
Violence is a distortion of our true nature.
Militarism is a shadow cast by the absence of inner illumination.
Peace is the natural state of a species aligned with its Creator‑given radiance.
Thus, in honouring Butler’s courage, we also affirm a profound spiritual reality:
Humanity was not designed for war. We were created for coherence, compassion, and communion.
Thank you to Professor Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa and TMS Editorial Board, for keeping this historic warning alive, and for continuously reminding the world that peace journalism is not merely an academic exercise, it is a spiritual duty and a luminous path forward for all who believe in the sanctity of life.
In solidarity for nonviolence, biophotonic harmony, human proclivity for peace and harmony inherent in most of our species and the restoration of our shared human light,
Hoosen Vawda, e-mail: vawda@ukzn.ac.za Global +27 82 291 4546