Posted on November 11, 2010 in Articles

Author’s Note: Four generations of men in my family, including me, have served in this country’s military during wartime. I’ve earned the right to my opinion.

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I want to make amends for what I did. Lending my energy to the military and the forces behind it qualifies as the least conscionable albeit, in my defense, most uninformed decision of my life. My only consideration was my own financial well-being, and the rest of humanity be damned.

My soon-to-be wife was pregnant, and I needed to pay for the delivery. My father, uncles and grandfather had all served in the military, and I decided I would make the Air Force a career. I gave no thought to what it stood for, nor what they did; my decision was based solely on my personal financial needs. I was shocked at the new environment in which I found myself.



I’d been raised not to follow the group. My mother’s favorite question was, “If Bobby jumped off the Empire State building, would you jump off the Empire State building?” Her message was clear, and it was that I should think for myself and not do anything simply because others were doing it. To my surprise I found myself surrounded by people anxious to do exactly what they were told because of the stripes on someone’s sleeves or the oak clusters on their collars.

As a result of my mother’s admonitions, I naturally recoiled at unquestioning obedience, choosing to stake out my own territory and conduct my own forms of protest. Bucking the system made me wildly popular with some of my peers, but persona non grata with others. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t just go along to get along. Fortunately for me, Vietnam was winding down, or my superiors would have surely transferred me there to get rid of me and teach me a lesson. Having never been to Vietnam, I didn’t understand the consequences of such group servility until I met my neighbor, Jim, and that’s when I learned there was good reason for non-compliance with the powers that be.

I wrote about him in a piece called Our Ride to Vietnam in Jim’s Porsche, but that wasn’t our only encounter. Jim had spent 19 years in the Marines, doing three tours in Vietnam, before being involuntarily transferred to the Air Force because of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and multiple scrapes with the law, both civil and military. In an attempt to get him his 20 years and his pension, they transferred him to the Air Force in hopes that he would be able to stay out of trouble long enough to reach retirement. I think he made it.

It wasn’t unusual on Saturday afternoons for Jim and I to get drunk, and the stories about Vietnam would come out. Tales about how they entered villages and killed everything that moved were the most heart wrenching, but Jim would tell them with a blank expression on his face. He told of one tour of duty where mostly he escorted oil company executives around the country. That’s right, oil company executives.

They were everywhere, according to Jim. What we were fighting for, despite the official narrative, was American oil companies’ hegemony over South China Sea oil. Only when they discovered that the oil was unrecoverable was the war was allowed to end. It was my introduction to the realities of America’s ostensible versus actual reasons for warfare.

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When finally I extricated myself from the clutches of the military, I remember feeling very dirty for a long time. I didn’t know why, I just knew I had associated myself with something undesirable, and nobody was talking about it. Actually they were, it’s just that the rest of us weren’t included in the discussion.

On every street corner there was a young man missing an arm, a leg or both, and they had plenty to say about the war in Vietnam. Problem was, they’d only talk to each other about it, so many years went by before we got the real story about what we’d done to that country. However, the truth only opened my eyes a tiny bit, and it would be many more years before I came to understand to what I’d made myself an accomplice.

In 1992, I suffered a debilitating bout with PTSD (not service related) and was finally able to empathize with the soldiers who’d been so carelessly tossed aside in the years subsequent to Vietnam. Knowing my experience, it made me sympathetic to what they must have experienced in Nam, though it was only part of the journey.

After 9/11 and in the run-up to the war in Iraq, I started reading. I read Mark Twain’s The War Prayer, General Smedley Butler’s War Is a Racket and Dwight D Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation, where he implicated the Military-Industrial Complex as the primary threat to America. Then I thought about all the mutilated bodies I’d seen at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center and Charleston Naval Station, and the burn victims at Wilford Hall. Could it be all these wars had nothing to do with truth, justice and the American way, and in reality were only intended to forward American corporate interests? Did we really use all these young men as cannon fodder? It appeared we’d been deceived, and because of my participation I believed myself responsible.

For a time I projected my self-loathing onto all in the military, but then I realized they’d been deceived, just like me. I’d swallowed the meme that we were protecting America’s freedoms, and it wasn’t until I’d been roused from my somnolence that I ever considered otherwise. Today, I figure most of these guys joined to create a brighter financial future for their families, just the same as me.

I decided to fashion myself after General Butler, although I hold no illusion that I compare with the man. To make amends for having lent my energy to the war machine, I work to get the message out about why we have wars. My efforts may prove insufficient, and my karmic payback in future lives may prove to be a bitch, but all I can do is all I can do.

I recognize the need for a military, and I no longer blame the men and women who choose to serve, although I believe their service is misguided. I do blame our elected officials and corporate leaders who carelessly risk the lives of our military and slaughter millions of innocent civilians overseas solely for profits, and it’s for that reason I continue speaking out. The country is no safer because of my service, mainly because we were never in any danger in the first place, but our leaders knew that. I’ll just keep working and hope I can pay back all that bad karma in this lifetime so I can start anew the next time around.

My most profound wish is peace for all, especially those who fought our hegemonic wars and suffer the torment of PTSD. I hope you all find the way back.

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Larry Wohlgemuth was raised during the tumultuous 60s in the midst of sometimes violent civil rights and antiwar protests. After a stint in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he earned a BBA degree from Washburn University. Wohlgemuth leans so far to the left he prefers to be called “Comrade”, and his book, “Capitalism’s Final Solution” is planned to be released in the spring, 2011. Larry is a contributor to Prose Before Hos and runs his own blog, It Begs the Question.

[tags]american military, veteran’s day, reflections of a soldier, air force, us military, vietnam, iraq, september 11th, war on terrorism, rethinking america, corporate interests, economic interests[/tags]