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First published in 1935, "War is a Racket" was written by the eccentric Medal of Honor winner (twice) and war hero, Marine General Smedley D. Butler. We became aware of the book through numerous recommendations from readers, read it, and decided, despite Butler's mid-30s isolationist bent, it was well worth recommending.

Why? Because Butler is the rare career professional who had an epiphany and realized that he was being used as a cog in a machine, and that the people running the machine (in this case the war machine) could care less about him or any other soldier. Butler doesn't mince words: "I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism." Whoa, hold onto your hats!

Smedley was one of those colorful, dashing characters that you don't run into anymore in the age of homogenized branding. He even allegedly exposed and prevented a right wing Wall Street coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt, early on in his administration.

But his chief claim to fame is this book, which pulls no punches. Butler's basic thesis is that war is an industry, something that Dwight D. Eisenhower would eventually echo in his famous parting plea to beware of the "military-industrial" complex. Let's just say, this is a book Rumsfeld and Cheney would have burned in a bonfire. Butler knew too much about how men like them operate.

Butler was way ahead of his time in suggesting some solutions for putting a wrench in the war profiteering industry. For one thing, he proposed that we should draft the "big boys" who profit from wars first, and let them fight on the front lines and live off of the salaries of soldiers. That would dramatically reduce the number of wars to only the absolutely necessary ones for self-defense.

Butler defined his title by declaring that "a racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not that which it seems to the majority of people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

But, of course, neither they nor their kin do the dying.

"War is a Racket" is a gem of an idiosyncratic but thought provoking book that was written 70 yeas ago -- and is suddenly back in fashion because it describes the Cheney/Rumsfeld clique without ever having known them. People of their type don't change. The war profiteers are always amongst us. It's a racket that doesn't seem to go away.

This is the 2003 republished edition by Feral Press, with additional material and an introduction that provides context to this fascinating screed.

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