Marshall and Saga here. Welcome back to the Realignment.

Anytime you try to boil down something as complicated as a war, even as as as as as

complicated as an individual person like Smelly Butler, into a into a you know a single

explanation, you're always going to triple groups.

Today's episode is based on a very true fact despite all the urges not to read the comments if you

consistently reply with one phrase, if you consistently email us one phrase. If you argue with us

in the comments by us, I mean mostly me in the comments eventually will have to do an episode on a

topic. That topic is General Smelly Butler may have heard his name in reference to a really great

episode we did around the war in Afghanistan with General Dan Boudre actually our biggest ever

episode of all time. People are bringing up an idea of war is a racket which is based on

the pamphlet that Smelly Butler wrote as a post retirement Marine Corps general in 1930,

who's based on the idea that will resonate with a lot of you that effectively war, corruption,

profiteering, drove a lot of really bad decisions in US foreign policy history and draw a lot of

decisions today. People are bringing up wars a racket in the context of the war in Afghanistan.

Now, well, sorry I want you to speak to this in a second, but I think we're both sympathetic to

critiques of the war in Iraq, critiques of the war in Afghanistan as the author of this book

Gangsters of Capitalism Smelly Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking America's Empire

will point out Smelly Butler's thought is a little simple, it's a little oversimplifized,

and it's a little misuse. So it's useful to have a really interesting author come on to talk

about it in its themes. Yeah, I you know, that's what I loved about Jonathan is that he even was

willing to say, look, yeah, like Smelly's analysis was not 100% on. It's kind of taken a life of

its own in the year 2022. Here's what the context of what he was actually saying was was actually

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