Stan Goff (born November 12, 1951, in San Diego, California) 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. 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.[1]
Goff was sent to Vietnam in 1970-71 during the Vietnam war. He served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as an infantryman, after which he was reassigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina following a bout with drug-resistant malaria. In 1973, he was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant.
During a break in service, he attended college at the University of Arkansas in Monticello and married Elizabeth Mackall. Their daughter, Elan Mackall Goff, was born September 1, 1976. In 1977, he enlisted again in the Army and was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) as a Private First Class, re-earning his sergeant's stripes in 1979. That same year, he joined the 75th Ranger Regiment, and after graduation from indoc, was reassigned to the 2nd Ranger Battalion on Fort Lewis, Washington.
After two years with the 2nd Ranger Battalion, Goff earned the rank of Staff Sergeant, and reenlisted on condition of reassignment to the Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama working as a small unit tactics instructor. He volunteered for the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (SFOD-D) during that assignment. After unit selection and training, Goff participated in operations in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Grenada (see Operation Urgent Fury).
In December, 1986, Goff was relieved from Delta with the rank of Sergeant First Class, based on an accusation that he denies related to having taken a woman into the Ambassador to El Salvador's residence for sex. He admits, however, that during the time of the alleged encounter, he was walking around the block with a local prostitute to smoke marijuana with her.[citation needed]
He was reassigned to the staff and faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served as the NCOIC of the Service Orientation Course, and developed the Ranger Orientation Program that selected cadets to attend Ranger School during their Junior-Senior summer. He permitted his enlistment to expire in 1987 - working for a time training SWAT teams for the Department of Energy Y-12 nuclear weapon facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
He rejoined the US Army in 1988, as a Staff Sergeant, and was assigned to the 1st Ranger Battalion.
Goff then volunteered for Special Forces training in 1989, and became a Special Operations Medical Sergeant assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg. While with 7th Group, he performed training and operational missions in Central and South America. Many of these missions were presented officially to the public as "counter-narcotics" operations supporting the War on Drugs. Goff later wrote that this dissonance was formative in his political shift to the left.[citation needed]
In 1990, he was divorced from Elizabeth Mackall. He was remarried in 1992 to Sherry Long in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He has three step-children from the marriage: Jessie Hobbs, Jayme Hobbs and Jeremy Hobbs.
Goff was reassigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment as a Special Operations Medical Sergeant in 1993, and was attached to 3rd Ranger Battalion as part of Task Force Ranger for the operation in Mogadishu, Somalia. Goff was redeployed to Fort Benning before the infamous Bakara firefight after a dispute with Ranger captain Michael D. Steele that verged upon violence. Not long after, he was promoted to Master Sergeant, effectively changing his job description from Special Forces Medic to SF Operations Sergeant.
Goff was then reassigned back to Fort Bragg, to the 3rd Special Forces Group, where he was given the task of running a Special Forces team, called an A-Detachment (in this case, Operational Detachment - A (ODA) 354, a military free-fall parachute specialty team). The story of his time with this team, up to and including his retirement from the Army in February 1996 (with special emphasis on Operation Restore Democracy in Haiti in 1994) is recounted in detail in his first book, Hideous Dream - A Soldier's Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti (Soft Skull Press, 2000).
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 Schwarzeneggeraction filmCollateral 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[2]” 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).[3]
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.
The 82nd Airborne Division is an airborne infantry division of the United States Army specializing in parachute assault operations into hostile areas with a U.S. Department of Defense mandate to be "on-call to fight any time, anywhere" at "the knife's edge of technology and readiness." Primarily based at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, the 82nd Airborne Division is part of the XVIII Airborne Corps. The 82nd Airborne Division is the U.S. Army's most strategically mobile division.
Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, is a military installation of the United States Army in North Carolina, and is one of the largest military installations in the world by population, with over 52,000 military personnel. The military reservation is located within Cumberland and Hoke counties, and borders the towns of Fayetteville, Spring Lake, and Southern Pines.
The United States invasion of Grenada began at dawn on 25 October 1983. The United States and a coalition of six Caribbean nations invaded the island nation of Grenada, 100 miles (160 km) north of Venezuela. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in military occupation within a few days. It was triggered by the strife within the People's Revolutionary Government, which resulted in the house arrest and execution of the previous leader and second Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, and the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council, with Hudson Austin as chairman. The invasion resulted in the appointment of an interim government, followed by elections in 1984.
The United States Army Special Forces (SF), colloquially known as the "Green Berets" due to their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force of the United States Army.
The 75th Ranger Regiment, also known as Army Rangers, is the premier light infantry unit and special operations force within the United States Army Special Operations Command. The regiment is headquartered at Fort Moore, Georgia and is composed of a regimental headquarters company, a military intelligence battalion, a special troops battalion, and three Ranger battalions.
The United States Army Special Operations Command (Airborne) (USASOC ( YOO-sə-sok)) is the command charged with overseeing the various special operations forces of the United States Army. Headquartered at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, it is the largest component of the United States Special Operations Command. It is an Army Service Component Command. Its mission is to organize, train, educate, man, equip, fund, administer, mobilize, deploy and sustain Army special operations forces to successfully conduct worldwide special operations.
Operation Uphold Democracy was a multinational military intervention designed to remove the military regime led and installed by Raoul Cédras after the 1991 Haitian coup d'état overthrew the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The operation was effectively authorized by the 31 July 1994 United Nations Security Council Resolution 940.
The 1st Ranger Battalion, currently based at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, United States, is the first of three ranger battalions belonging to the United States Army's 75th Ranger Regiment.
The 2nd Ranger Battalion, currently based at Joint Base Lewis–McChord south of Seattle, Washington, United States, is the second of three ranger battalions belonging to the United States Army's 75th Ranger Regiment.
The 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, originally the 505th Infantry Regiment, is an airborne infantry regiment of the United States Army, one of four infantry regiments of the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army, with a long and distinguished history.
George W. Dunaway was a United States Army soldier who served as the second Sergeant Major of the Army. He was sworn in on September 1, 1968, and served until his term ended in September 1970.
Arthur D. "Bull" Simons was a United States Army Special Forces colonel best known for leading the Sơn Tây raid, an attempted rescue of U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War from a North Vietnamese prison at Sơn Tây. He also led the successful 1979 rescue of two employees of Electronic Data Systems from prison in Iran.
Robert Lewis Howard was the most highly decorated officer of Vietnam United States Army Special Forces and Medal of Honor recipient of the Vietnam War. He was wounded 14 times over 54 months of combat, was awarded the Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, and four Bronze Stars.
The 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) (1st SFG) (A) is a unit of the U.S. Army Special Forces operating under the United States Pacific Command. It is designed to deploy and execute nine doctrinal missions throughout the Indo-Pacific Command area of operations: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, direct action, counter-insurgency, special reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, information operations, counterproliferation of weapon of mass destruction, and security force assistance.
The 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) – abbreviated 3rd SFG(A) and often simply called 3rd Group – is an active duty United States Army Special Forces (SF) group which was active in the Vietnam Era (1963–69), deactivated, and then reactivated in 1990. 3rd Group is designed to deploy and execute nine doctrinal missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, direct action, counter-insurgency, special reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, information operations, counterproliferation of weapon of mass destruction, and security force assistance. The 3rd SFG(A) was primarily responsible for operations within the AFRICOM area of responsibility, as part of the Special Operations Command, Africa (SOCAFRICA). Its primary area of operations (AO) is now Africa as part of a 2015 SOCOM directive but 3rd Group has also been involved in the Caribbean and the Greater Middle East. The 3rd SFG(A) has seen extensive action in the War on Terror and its members have distinguished themselves on the battlefield in Afghanistan.
James C. Yarbrough is a retired brigadier general in the United States Army.
Iván Castro is a former United States Army officer who continued serving on active duty in the Special Forces despite losing his eyesight. He was one of three blind active duty officers who served in the U.S. Army and the only blind officer serving in the United States Army Special Forces. Castro served at the Special Operations Recruiting Battalion as the Assistant Operations Officer/Total Army Involvement Recruiting Coordinator before his retirement in 2017. He is an advocate of rehabilitation, employment and education for those wounded in combat and participates in various races and marathons as a contestant.
Brigadier General David G. Fox is a retired United States Army officer who served as the commanding general of the Installation Management Command Korea Region.
General Raymond Anthony Thomas III is a retired general officer of the United States Army and former commander of the United States Special Operations Command.
Thomas Patrick Payne is a United States Army Delta Force sergeant major and infantry instructor, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during a hostage rescue mission in an area of northern Iraq controlled by the Islamic State. Payne is the first living Delta Force Medal of Honor recipient, and the first to receive the Medal of Honor for actions during Operation Inherent Resolve.
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