Stan Goff

Stan Goff     (activist)
Born	November 12, 1951 San Diego, California, USA
Nationality	US
American anti-war activist, writer, and blogger. Prior to his activism Goff had a long career in the U.S. armed forces.

Stan Goff is an American anti-war activist, writer, and blogger. Prior to his activism Goff had a long career in the U.S. armed forces, serving in the United States Army from 1970 to 1996 with two breaks in service. After retiring from the military he became a political activist, adopting anti-imperialist, feminist, and socialist/Marxist views, and is now a Christian.

Military career

"Stan Goff entered military service in January 1970 and retired from the Army on February 1, 1996. His first assignment was to Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and he retired from the 3rd Special Forces, the unit he belonged to during the 1994 U.S. invasion of Haiti. In the course of his career, he was assigned to two parachute infantry units, three Ranger units, two Special Forces units, and Delta Force. In addition to working in a total of eight conflict areas, he taught small unit tactics at the Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama and Military Science at West Point.

Activism

Goff became politically active almost immediately after his military career ended, and quickly took up the study of Marxism. He joined the Communist Party USA for a brief period, but left the party in response to what he describes as the demand for "ideological conformity," and his belief that the party was hostile to feminism. This is a criticism he levels frequently at the entire left, which he describes as "male-dominated, and tokenizing of women.".

In 1996, Goff secured a job as organizing director for Democracy South, a non-profit organization which did research and advocacy on money-and-politics in the South, and stayed there for the next five and a half years.

In 2001, he did a short stint as the military technical adviser for the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film Collateral Damage, which he describes as one of the most miserable jobs in his life, and for which he publicly apologized after the film was altered, in the wake of 9-11, into what Goff called "yet another male revenge fantasy".

Throughout this post-military period, he remained in touch with Haitian political issues, and developed a close working relationship with Katharine Kean, a film maker who has worked in Haiti for decades, and the political cadres of the National Popular Party, a left party in Haiti with a peasant popular base. He returned to Haiti dozens of times since then, and has written extensively on the political developments there.

After the September 11 attacks and the resulting push for war, Goff was in demand as a public speaker. His military career and his opposition to the coming war gave him a degree of immunity from many criticisms made against anti-war advocates.

He also became involved with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization around the same time, drawn primarily by the organization's analysis of Black nationalism, and the organization's stated goal of the "refoundation" of the American Left. In the process of writing a column called "Military Matters" for the organization, he began his second book, Full Spectrum Disorder - The Military in the New American Century, (Soft Skull Press, 2004).

Activism against the Iraq War

Goff is referred to in Mary Tillman's book, Boots on the Ground by Dusk” as being a major influence and assistance in getting to the truth behind the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman.

After the publication of Full Spectrum Disorder, Goff became interested in the connections between militarism and the social construction of masculinity. He studied feminist writings and theory over the next two years in the process of writing his third book, Sex & War (Lulu Press, 2006).

In March 2006 Goff helped to organize the Veterans and Survivors March of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans For Peace, Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace to call attention to the cost of the war in Iraq and its impact on relief efforts along the Gulf coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

After the Veterans and Survivors March, Goff pulled back from public engagement and worked as a landscape helper, an apprentice stonemason, and a home deconstruction crew with Wake County (NC) Habitat for Humanity.

He took up a study of the historical Jesus in 2006, and from that study gained an interest in theology. In 2008, he was baptized and is a professed Christian and pacifist, eschewing political labels like socialist or anarchist. In 2009, he wrote a tract entitled "Why I won't call myself progressive", that reflected the influences of Christian writers John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, Amy Laura Hall, and Ivan Illich. He is an advocate of non-coercive, community re-localization efforts and what he calls "food praxis," or practical activities that promote food sovereignty.

Goff resided with his wife, Sherry, for a year - 2009-2010 - in Grecia, Costa Rica; and now lives in Michigan. He worked with the Adrian Dominican Sisters on a long term permaculture land use project until 2017, and now devotes full time to writing.

He is an active blogger and is the author of several books, including Hideous Dream (2000), Full-Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century (2004), Energy War (2006), Sex & War (2006), Borderline - Reflections on War, Sex, and Church (2015), "Mammon's Ecology - Metaphysic of the Empty Sign" (2018), and "Tough Gynes - Violent Women in Film as Honorary Men" (2019). He has also been a contributor to CounterPunch and Huffington Post.

Articles & Commentary

1999

• "Inside U.S. Counterinsurgency: A Soldier Speaks," iF Magazine, November/December 1999.

2000

• "Iraq/US veteran of imperialism," June 10, 2000 International Tribunal for U.S./NATO War Crimes in Yugoslavia, posted on studentsforwar.org.
• "In your name: A soldier's story," Global Resistance, August 3, 2000.

2001

• "War Crimes and the Hague 'Tribunal'," Global Resistance, July 30, 2001.
• "The So-Called Evidence Is a Farce", Narco News, October 10, 2001.
• "A Summary of Thoughts on the Infinite War," neravt.com, October 14, 2001. [Home Link inactive to "Jay's Leftist and 'Progressive' Internet Resources Directory", May 21, 2005].
• "The Story we Hear on the News and Read in the Newspapers is simply not believable," Centre for Research of Globalisation (Canada), October 20, 2001.
• "Bush's War - The WTC Oil Gambit," Conspiracy Planet, November 20, 2001.
• Forwarded email, October 14, 2001, The Blacklisted Journalist, posted December 1, 2001.

2002

• Essay: "Is Columbia the Next Vietnam?" Workers World News Service, July 30, 2002.
• "The Infinite War and Its Roots," From the Wilderness, August 21, 2002.
• Email: Response to Patrick Bond's article "Are economists still unsustainable?", September 2, 2002.

2003

• "Nukes in the Dark. Blackout Left Emergency Diesels as Sole Protection at Nuclear Power Plants," CounterPunch, August 28, 2003.
• "Korea, China and the US," From the Wilderness, October 14, 2003.
• "Feeling More Secure, Yet? Bush, Security, Energy and Money," CounterPunch, December 3, 2003.

2004

• "The Energy Crisis Is Here," Scoop (New Zealand), January 2004.
• "Military Matters: Rape Culture and the Military," William Bowles, March 6, 2004.
• "The Bridge," CounterPunch, April 14, 2004.
• "Time for Kerry to Step Up on Haiti," The Black Commentator, March 18, 2004.
• "Full Spectrum Disorder," International Socialist Review, May/June 2004.
• "A Ramble through Gender & the Military," Freedom Road, May 16, 2004.
• Stan Goff comments on Fahrenheit 9/11 critiques, email to Marxism AT lists.econ.utah.edu, July 8, 2004.
• "The War for Saudi Arabia," posted on Thompson Region Greens (Canada), August 9, 2004 (written for subscription service Sanders Research Associates).
• "Swift Boat Dogfight. The Gendered Degeneration of American Politics," CounterPunch, August 23, 2004.
• "John, John, John...There You Go Again. Kerry's 'Energy Plan'," CounterPunch, August 13, 2004.
• "There's No There There. Debating a Neocon," CounterPunch, November 10, 2004.

• See Don Hammerquist's "Response to Stan Goff's 'Debating a Necon'" in Bring the Ruckus, Goff's "Reply to Hammerquist," Bring the Ruckus, January 15, 2005, and Hammerquist's "Reply to Goff," Bring the Ruckus, April 2005.

2005

• "The Porn Debate. Wrapping Profit in the Flag," posted on notforsale-book.org, February 2005.

• Ernest Greene, "And Now for the Refutation," hardcoregossip.com, February 14, 2005 (scroll down page, as another copy of Goff's article precedes Greene's response).
• pr, "Get Gough," Melbourne (Australia) IndyMedia, March 12, 2005 (scroll down page to article).

• "An Open Letter to Democrats. Listen to Galloway and Learn Something," CounterPunch, May 19, 2005. re British MP George Galloway.

2006

• "Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America," truthdig, October 3, 2006.

Haiti & Venezuela

• Articles on Haiti posted at The Black Commentator.com.
• "Haitian labor leader appeals for solidarity," People's Weekly World, October 18, 1997.
• "A brief account of Haiti," originally posted at all4democracy.org, October 22, 1999.
• "Lavalas and the 'Laboratory'. The Haitian Conjunctu," uaia.org, 2000.
• "Haiti? The IMF?," all4democracy.org, April 19, 2000.
• Stan Goff on Haiti, Webster University internal email (forwarded), April 28, 2000.
• "Fear and Loathing in Haiti. A journal of Aristide's inauguration," AmonHotep.com, January 16-February 9, 2001. Scroll down page for article.
• "Diary of a Counterinsurgent" (Venezuela), ZMag, June 12, 2002.
• "Beloved Haiti: A (Counter) Revolutionary Bicentennial," AmonHotep.com, February 9, 2004. Scroll down page for earlier Goff articles on Haiti.
• "Haiti & Venezuela: Coup & Empire": Part I (March 23, 2004), and Part II (April 29, 2004), From the Wilderness.
• "Open Season in Iraq. MAMs (Military-Age Males) Are Back," CounterPunch, May 24, 2004.
• "ABC of Opportunism. 'Progressive' Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti," CounterPunch, July 3/4, 2004.
• "The Haitian Intifada": Part I (November 30, 2004) and Part II (January 9, 2005), From the Wilderness.

Iraq & Iran

• "Persian Peril: Just when the Bush administration seemed to have figured out that invading Iraq was a mistake, they announce the next stop in their Axis of Evil tour": Parts 1 through 5, From the Wilderness, August 9-December 6, 2004.

On the War in Iraq

Abu Ghraib

• "Jurassic Park, Pseudo-events, and Prisons: The fallout from Abu Ghraib": Part I (May 18, 2004); Part II (June 11, 2004); Part III (July 2, 2004); Part IV (July 15, 2004); Part V (September 24, 2004); and Part VI (April 28, 2005), From the Wilderness.

2003

• "Another Embittered Rant from a Former Soldier. State of the Union, MLK and 30mm DU," CounterPunch, January 20, 2003. See depleted uranium.
• "The Idiot Prince Will Have His War," From the Wilderness, March 17, 2003.
• "A short history of the Bush Mafia's war in Iraq," From the Wilderness, April 21, 2003.
• "Bring 'Em On?," CounterPunch, July 3, 2003.
• "Don't extend the troops and don't replace them... Bring them home now," CounterPunch, July 26, 2003.
• "The Missing Wounded. Injury and Decorum in Iraq," CounterPunch, August 1, 2003.
• Jamie Glazov, "Symposium: A Guerrilla War in Iraq?," FrontPageMagazine.org, August 4, 2003. Participants were Jamie Glazov, James Woolsey, Jacob Heilbrunn, David Kaiser and Stan Goff.
• "Gulf War II Syndrome? Military Equipment and 'Pneumonia'," CounterPunch, August 6, 2003.
• "'Sign On and Stop Whining!' The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure," CounterPunch, August 18, 2003.
• "The Infinite War and Its Roots," From the Wilderness, August 27, 2003.
• "DOGFIGHT: The Gendered Degeneration of Politics ," William Bowles, August 30, 2004.
• "The Occupation Runs Out of Gas. It Was the Oil and It Is Like Vietnam," CounterPunch, September 15, 2003.
• "'They weren’t liberating anything'," Socialist Worker Online, October 3, 2003.
• "Piss On My Leg. Perception Control and the Stage Management of War," CounterPunch, October 17, 2003.
• "The Left and the Military: Leaping the Chasm," posted on TalkAboutSupport.com, October 30, 2003.
• "Hold on to your humanity: An open letter to GIs in Iraq," The Socialist Party.org, November 13, 2003.
• "Hold On to Your Humanity. An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq," CounterPunch, November 14/23, 2003.

2004

• "War, Race and Elections," CounterPunch, January 1, 2004.
• Speech, Fayetteville, NC, March 20, 2004.
• "The New Line. The Democrats and Iraq," CounterPunch, April 19, 2004.
• "Timeline: Path to Pandemonium," From the Wilderness, April 20, 2004.
• "Body Count 1001. Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?," CounterPunch, September 8, 2004.
• "Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot. Witnesses," CounterPunch, September 14, 2004.
• "Today's Imperialism - Uniquely American. How credit and debt put the United States on top… so far," From the Wilderness, October 28, 2004.
• Speech: "We Will Reclaim Our Armed Forces!" given at the "December 11 [2004] Public Meeting and Speak Out in New York City," posted at Pottawatomie Creek blogspot, December 16, 2004.
• "We Will Reclaim Our Armed Forces!," December 19, 2004.

2005

• "Phase One Against Empire. A Period for Pedagogy," CounterPunch, January 1/2, 2005.
• "Murder by the Numbers. The Specter of the Draft," From the Wilderness, January 14, 2005.
• "Military Matters #32 — Donald Rumsfeld & Porter Goss Say We Should Be Very Afraid… and We Should," Freedom Road, March 1, 2005.
• "The View from Cumberland County, North Carolina. On Revolutionary Optimism," CounterPunch, March 12/13, 2005.
• "Fayetteville: An Assessment Of Military Resistance," From the Wilderness, March 29, 2005.
• "A Trojan Jackass for the Anti-War Movement," CounterPunch, April 5, 2005.
• "Military Matters #35 — What We Don't and Do Know: The Case of Hasan Akbar," Freedom Road, April 19, 2005. Reprinted from CounterPunch.
• An Open Letter to Democrats - Listen to Galloway and Learn Something, Counterpunch, May 19, 2005.
• "Out of Iraq, Now," News & Observer (North Carolina) (Common Dreams), October 27, 2005; also posted on TruthOut website.

Interviews with Stan Goff

• Mick McCormick, Transcript of the Interview with Stan Goff: "You've Got To Be Up Front," Narco News, November 4, 2001.
• Jennifer Van Bergen, Interview with Stan Goff, TruthOut, July 16, 2003.
• Transcript: "Veterans, Military Families Push to Return Troops to U.S.," CNN, August 13, 2003.
• Derek Seidman, "Bring the Troops Home Now. An interview with Stan Goff," ZMag.org, November 11, 2003.
• Jennifer Van Bergen, Interview: "Stan Goff on Iraq, FTAA, & Fascism," ftaaimc.org, December 18, 2003.
• Amy Goodman, Interview with Stan Goff: "Fmr. U.S. Special Forces Officer Describes Arresting Current Coup Leader in 1994," Democracy Now!, March 3, 2004.
• Anthony Fenton, Interview: "The Invasion of Haiti," ZMag.org, May 19, 2004.
• Derek Seidman, "Bring Them Home Now: An Interview with Stan Goff," CounterPunch, August 6, 2004.
• Rachel J. Elliott, "Stan Goff on Why U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers Us All," The Sun Magazine, November 2004.
• M. Junaid Alam, "An Interview with Stan Goff," Left Hook, December 20, 2004.
• Kiraz Janicke, "We can win, and we will win," Green Left Weekly, February 9, 2005.
• Rachel J. Elliott, "Behind The Matrix in Special Forces. Speaking With Stan Goff," Garlic and Grass, May 21, 2005.

Articles & Commentary

1997

• G.R. Quinn, Letter to The Prism, July/August 1997, re Stan Goff, with Goff's reply.

2001

• Jon Sanders, "A week after the attacks, speakers at UNC-Chapel Hill 'teach-in' compare U.S. with Nazis, terrorists," Clarion Call No. 123, John Locke Foundation, September 21, 2001.

2002

• "Slobogoogling: Stan Goff," Off the Kuff, February 24, 2002.
• Jon Sanders, "How to teach about the war at 'America's leading public university'," Clarion Call No. 173, John Locke Foundation, September 20, 2002; and posted in the Ashville Tribune, September 25, 2002.
• Jon Sanders, "Anti-American Protest at the University of North Carolina," FrontPageMagazine, October 9, 2002; originally published in The Carolina Journal, October 2002, and posted on Campus Watch: "...The hidden-economic-agenda-behind-the-war is a message Goff, a Marxist, has recycled since the U.S. intervened in Yugoslavia. As a member of the 'International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosovic,' Goff has put forth the notion that the well-documented July 1995 Srebenica massacre was a 'giant hoax' orchestrated by the U.S. in order to wage 'economic warfare' — that 'Milosevic is no war criminal' nor 'a dictator,' and that there 'was never any coordinated campaign of genocide or ethnic cleansing by Serbs, no massacres at either Racek or Srebrenica, and never any such thing as Serbian 'rape camps.'"

2003

• Elizabeth Wolfe, "Campaign Wants U.S. Troops Home From Iraq," AP, August 13, 2003.
• Patrick J. Dickson, "'Bring Them Home Now' speakers rip U.S. policy on Iraq," Pacific and European Stars and Stripes, August 14, 2003.
• Dave Lindorff, "Military Families Against the War," In These Times, September 5, 2003.
• Bill Gural, "Liberation or Occupation: a teach-in at UNC, Chapel Hill, NC Indymedia, September 8, 2003. Stan Goff was a member of the panel.
• Mark Hand, "Building a Vanguard Against the Apocalypse. Stan Goff's Full Spectrum Disorder," CounterPunch, November 8, 2003.

2004

• Megan Cornish, "GIs resist the war machine. From Vietnam to Iraq, redefining 'courage under fire," socialism.com, April/May 2004: "According to antiwar activist and retired Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff, possibly 1,700 troops have deserted while on leave. Others are taking a more tragic way out; among many suspicious deaths, 24 are documented as suicides."
• Jacqueline Kucinich, "Bring Them On? Bring Them Home!," The Nation, August 13, 2004.
• dru, "Responding to Goff" (parts 1-3), misnomer, November 26, 2004. Re Goff's Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century.

2005

• Justin Podur, "Stan Goff in 3D," Killing Train, January 5, 2005.
• Dave Zirin, "Mr. Frank's Fatwah. New Republic Calls for Death and Torture of Arundhati Roy and Stan Goff," CounterPunch, January 31, 2005.
• "Anti-war, anti-globalisation movements can win power," Green Left Weekly, February 16, 2005: "The March 24 public meeting that will set the Third Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference (APISC 2005) in motion will not feature a panel of speakers from Asia or the Pacific island countries. A single speaker — former US Special Operations soldier Stan Goff — will address the forum." See more Stan Goff links at Socialist Alliance.org.
• Jim Brown, "Columnist Feels Colo. U's AfroAm Program Promotes Leftist Ideas," American Family Association, March 17, 2005: " '... a book called Brothers: Black Soldiers in the Nam, which was written by Stan Goff, a former recruiter for the Communist Party USA.' According to the FrontPagemagazine.com writer, Goff claims America's own Central Intelligence Agency started the war on terror in order to get heroin from Afghanistan to fund further military operations."
• Johann Hari, "Stan Goff style Socialism is spreading!" Sydney IndyMedia, April 19, 2005.

Books by Stan Goff

• (2000) Hideous Dream. Soft Skull Press. ISBN 9781887128636
• (2004) Full-Spectrum Disorder. CreateSpace Publishing. ISBN 9781932360127
• (2006) Energy War - Exterminism. Publisher: Stan Goff (Std Copyright). ASIN B002EVQC8C
• (2006) Sex & War. Lulu Press Publishers. ISBN 9781411643802
• (2015) Borderline - Reflections on War, Sex, and Church. Cascade Books Publishers. ISBN 9781625644855
• (2018) Mammon's Ecology - Metaphysic of the Empty Sign. Cascade Books ISBN 9781532617683
• (2019) "Tough Gynes - Violent Women in Film as Honorary Men". Cascade Books ISBN 9781532617683

 

A Document by Stan Goff

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)	Description
Document:The So-Called Evidence Is a Farce	article	10 October 2001	9-11 Peak Oil American Empire	'What they are responding to is not September 11th, but the beginning of a permanent and precipitous decline in worldwide oil production, the beginning of a deep and protracted worldwide recession, and the unraveling of the empire.'

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.

References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 07.07.2021.
Wikipedia is not affiliated with Wikispooks.   Original page source here