- Mar 2, 2006
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This article is a year and half old, but the contents still has validity today - quite long, but worthwhile reading.
HOMELAND INSECURITY
Stan Goff On Why U. S . Foreign Policy Endangers Us All
Interview with Rachel J. Elliott, The Sun, November 2004 (347)
Stan Goff spent twenty-four years in the U. S . military, much of it in the Special Forces . He fought in Vietnam, was a sniper with the counter-terrorism unit Delta Force, and taught military science at West Point . His ca-reer took him to Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, and other hot spots around the globe . He saw up close how the U.S. government ?s official statements didn?t match up with the actions of its military.
His role in the U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1994 disillusioned him for good. Officially named ?Operation Restore Democracy,? the invasion, Goff says, was aimed only at eliminating any threat to U.S. domination. In his book Hideous Dream: A Soldier?s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull Press) , he writes, ?Haiti taught me what I was and showed me what I must become.?
Having spent his adult life in the military, Goff wasn?t sure where to turn once he no longer believed in its mission . ?I was fortunate ,? he says , ?to have people close to me who were on the other side of the debate .? His sister had introduced him to women?s-rights and gay-rights activists, and an Internet search put him in touch with a North Carolina g roup called the Carolina Socialist Forum. Through that connection, he made many friends who helped him make the leap f rom soldier to activist. Goff retired f rom the military in 1996 and has been involved in progressive causes ever since .
Today Goff is active in the Bring Them Home Now cam-paign, led by Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace. The campaign calls for the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Iraq. Its website , www.BringThemHomeNow.org , publishes anonymous statements from GIS, so that they can write freely about what?s going on in Iraq. ?The more soldiers do it,? Goff says, ?the more likely others will be to speak up.? Goff has a personal interest in seeing an end to the conflict : his son is in the military and was stationed in Iraq earlier this year.
Goff ?s most recent book is Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century (Soft Skull Press). He?s currently working on a new book about gender and the military, titled Sex and War.
I first encountered Goff at an informal talk he gave in Chapel Hill , North Carolina . For more than an hour, he spoke passionately about the current war in Iraq, about class struggle here in the U.S., and about what he considers to be the real motives behind U . S . foreign policy.
For this interview, we met at his house in Raleigh, North Carolina . A sturdily built man, Goff met me at the door with a firm handshake. On the walls of his small home office hang vibrant paintings from Haiti, a place he refers to as his ?second home.? Since the 1994 invasion, he has been back to that country ten times as a member of the Haiti Support Net work . We sat in his kitchen, surrounded by pictures of his children and his first grandchild.
HOMELAND INSECURITY
Stan Goff On Why U. S . Foreign Policy Endangers Us All
Interview with Rachel J. Elliott, The Sun, November 2004 (347)
Stan Goff spent twenty-four years in the U. S . military, much of it in the Special Forces . He fought in Vietnam, was a sniper with the counter-terrorism unit Delta Force, and taught military science at West Point . His ca-reer took him to Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, and other hot spots around the globe . He saw up close how the U.S. government ?s official statements didn?t match up with the actions of its military.
His role in the U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1994 disillusioned him for good. Officially named ?Operation Restore Democracy,? the invasion, Goff says, was aimed only at eliminating any threat to U.S. domination. In his book Hideous Dream: A Soldier?s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull Press) , he writes, ?Haiti taught me what I was and showed me what I must become.?
Having spent his adult life in the military, Goff wasn?t sure where to turn once he no longer believed in its mission . ?I was fortunate ,? he says , ?to have people close to me who were on the other side of the debate .? His sister had introduced him to women?s-rights and gay-rights activists, and an Internet search put him in touch with a North Carolina g roup called the Carolina Socialist Forum. Through that connection, he made many friends who helped him make the leap f rom soldier to activist. Goff retired f rom the military in 1996 and has been involved in progressive causes ever since .
Today Goff is active in the Bring Them Home Now cam-paign, led by Military Families Speak Out and Veterans for Peace. The campaign calls for the U.S. government to pull its troops out of Iraq. Its website , www.BringThemHomeNow.org , publishes anonymous statements from GIS, so that they can write freely about what?s going on in Iraq. ?The more soldiers do it,? Goff says, ?the more likely others will be to speak up.? Goff has a personal interest in seeing an end to the conflict : his son is in the military and was stationed in Iraq earlier this year.
Goff ?s most recent book is Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century (Soft Skull Press). He?s currently working on a new book about gender and the military, titled Sex and War.
I first encountered Goff at an informal talk he gave in Chapel Hill , North Carolina . For more than an hour, he spoke passionately about the current war in Iraq, about class struggle here in the U.S., and about what he considers to be the real motives behind U . S . foreign policy.
For this interview, we met at his house in Raleigh, North Carolina . A sturdily built man, Goff met me at the door with a firm handshake. On the walls of his small home office hang vibrant paintings from Haiti, a place he refers to as his ?second home.? Since the 1994 invasion, he has been back to that country ten times as a member of the Haiti Support Net work . We sat in his kitchen, surrounded by pictures of his children and his first grandchild.