My good friend Brian persuaded me to read Butler’s War is a Racket and this is one book I would recommend highly especially to believers in “good” wars but that’s not what this post is about.
Butler had 3 suggestions to end war.
1. Remove profit from war- on this point, he added the businessmen, presidents, members of congress who profit from war should be paid the same amount the rank and file are paid for risking their lives. He builds on this in a speech where he talks of these profits as blood money and that generations of Americans (this book was addressed to the American public) will keep paying for the deficit caused by war.
2. Require a limited plebiscite of those who are going to do the dying in war if war should be declared
3. Limit military forces to home defense purposes
He writes in the same book
when our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a “war to make the world safe for democracy” and a “war to end all wars”.
Well, 18yrs after, the world has less of a democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Austria live under democracies or monarchies?[..] Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.
