Oct 11, 2005 3 min read

In 1995 I spoke with my son about my Vietnam War experiences. Being a noble-minded soul who needs a noble cause to guide his life, he asked about his Dad’s experiences in combat. Boys go through a phase where they thrill to hear these things.

So I took this opportunity to really lay it out as I really felt about my service to my country.

“Son,” I began, “I barely escaped the ‘slaughterhouse’ of Vietnam. But like so many others I returned to the ‘states’ an awakening soul.”

I continued, “The Marine Corps tried to trick me into re-enlisting and returning to Vietnam by using the bait of promotions. Many junior officers like myself made the rank of captain after only 21/2 years of active duty and less than 2 years of field experience. This should have made the warning flags wave before anyone’s eyes. I knew I was not deserving or ready to skillfully command an entire company of Marines!

“Now that years have passed since 1967, I realize that this was just another version of the old ‘bait and switch’ scam dignified by some perverse reference to ‘national security’ and the tired lies of patriotic duty glamorized by meaningless heroic self-sacrifice.

“You see son, the manipulators of military personnel policy wanted me and other young officers to be agreeable by filling our heads with daydreams of fast promotion, job security (?), and higher pay.

“But what I could not stomach was the responsibility of attaining higher rank bought at the cost of misleading the ‘kids’ in my command, telling them they were about to engage in some kind of noble adventure … where I knew from experience that behind the screen of patriotic pretense the driving dynamic of war today is a vast corporate greed along with the reality of individual career-advancement ambition crushing war’s poor, ignorant, na?ve victims in uniform.

“Hear me good son,” I concluded. “Everyone is loving for their own ends … not for freedom.”

Readers, if people really loved freedom, they would take up the spiritual search to find out who we all really are-The Formless One!

But man cannot free himself from the wave of destruction while he walks the planet in “vertical sleep” with his eyeballs’ foreskins pulled back.

If people were really sincere about loving freedom they would be bitterly disappointed in “fake democracy,” in “fake science,” in “fake religions,” in “fake educational systems,” in “fake love.”

But they are not bitterly disillusioned. And so the whole sad, sorrowful slaughterhouse agenda continues to this day.

Raymond Pohaski

Uniontown