SF/Delta Guy/Peace Freak?

[BKK]

I was reading this f'd up article about "Iraq Veterans Against the War", and was pretty bored until I hit this paragraph.

“The US military has one of the best affirmative-action programs in the country,” says Stan Goff, a 26-year veteran of the US Special Forces, including the ultra-secret Delta Force. On the march to New Orleans, the rugged and compact Goff is playing the role of sergeant major, rallying the sleepyhead vets for the morning briefings, setting the tempo, always moving. “The other thing about the Army is that it’s fair. If you know the regs you can work the system.” Goff also points out that the highest-paid military general makes only about 14 times what the lowest-paid grunt earns — compared with private-sector pay discrepancies that reach ratios of 700 to one."

I guess these bozos are on some march from Mobile, AL to New Orleans.

Is this guy FOS, or is this guy real. Anyone know him?

http://phx.com/Article.aspx?id=10717&page=1

[airbornelawyer]

Google Goff, or search here. Goff is not a peace freak; as they say "he's not anti-war, he's for the other side." (or at least against our side)

[BKK]

You are right! Plenty of search hits on him. At least he is not a fraud like most you find in the news. However, he is definately out there.

-Marxist anti-war activist
-Speaker for Veterans Teaching Peace in Schools
-Member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosovic
-In 1994, attempted to align himself with the pro-Socialist revolution of the Lavala Party in Haiti
-Writer for The Freedom Road Socialist Organization
-Former recruiter for the Communist Party

Sorry to bring this up if it has been already covered.

[Bailaviborita]

Originally Posted by BKK

“The US military has one of the best affirmative-action programs in the country,”

We like to call it an informal quota system. :D

[magician]

Stan is not a "peace freak."

Stan is a bonafide militant Marxist, a socialist activist, and prolific writer on revolutionary subjects.

Big freakin' difference.

If you glance at the origins of the organization with which he is involved, the FRSO, or Freedom Road Socialist Organization, you see that it derives (per its own statements and line drawings) from a split within the Revolutionary Communist Party - USA, a radical Maoist communist party.

In other words, folks who merit a bit of scrutiny and watching, particularly when they make a transition from writing dense theoretical tracts to activism.

[Tracy]

Originally Posted by magician

...In other words, folks who merit a bit of scrutiny and watching, particularly when they make a transition from writing dense theoretical tracts to activism.

Yep. I find it rather amusing they back a system written by a fool, in pub, in England. Only took the Russians 70 years to figure out the crap didn't work.

[magician]

You do make a point, Tracy.

I look more at what it actually means to be a Maoist, however. It is a defining question. If a Marxist affirmatively answers the question with intellectual honesty, it is tantamount to stating that they are acting against the interests of the bourgeois state, with all that implies.

It is not possible to be a Maoist, and engage merely in rootless theoretical hagglings. If you are a Maoist, you are a revolutionary, and that means that you are an organizer, and that you are organizing and planning and preparing for the overthrow of the bourgeois state, specifically by violence.

The journal of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, or RIM, of which the Revolutionary Communist Party - USA is a member, is called A World to Win. It is illuminating reading.

It is also helpful to read the RCP-USA's own newspaper, The Revolutionary Worker.

Gives you some insight, and some context, within which to better appreciate Stan's own writings, and the statements of the FRSO.

The thing is, to which FRSO does Stan pledge allegiance?

And does it really matter?

Maoist is, as Maoist does.

[SOTB]

Originally Posted by Tracy

I find it rather amusing they back a system written by a fool, in pub, in England.

Damn, for a minute there, I thought you were talking about the Corps -- until you got to the part about it happening in England....:D

[Hardrock Charlie]

When I was assigned to 2nd. Plt., C Co, 1/75, Stan Goff was my first Plt. Sgt. As there were no vacancies in any other rooms, he told me to throw my s%@t in his room. He was an E-6 at the time (that is another story). Having served in most all Army SOF units with tours in VN, he was a highly experienced operator with a lot of tactical knowledge. Me being a cherry, his dealings with me were focused strictly on training, with the occasional wild story thrown in. At that time he certainly didn't seem to be that far left of center. But then again, I was just a new guy and we never discussed politics. It is actually kind of strange to see where his head is.

[magician]

Hognose asked me a question which made me think of Stan Goff.

I googled, and this thread was linked. Been awhile since I paid much attention to American Maoists. I kept watching for them at televised demonstrations in Ferguson, etc.

They are the masked dudes (and chicks) with backpacks and real gas masks that work just behind the leading edge of violent protests. They are the ones that throw rocks and actually hit cops. They are the ones seeking to catalyze violence.

Good times.

[Purple36]

Didn't he have something to do with the SF Underground?

[magician]

Uh, no.

Different dude entirely.

[snaquebite]

Relief for cause when I was his Company SGM...loose cannon nut job...'nuff said

[Guy]

Originally Posted by snaquebite

Relief for cause when I was his Company SGM...loose cannon nut job...'nuff said

Was this while he was in Haiti?

[Murph]

Originally Posted by magician

Hognose asked me a question which made me think of Stan Goff.

I know you'll remember him as an E6 in A Co, 2d Batt. We ran into him again in Panama at JOTC before he went behind the fence. I know it will strike some as strange to say so but he was a very good guy--I had no about his politics at that time. Hell, maybe he didn't either. On a tangent, can you believe (today) that we worked with so many VN combat vets?

[magician]

Originally Posted by Murph

I know you'll remember him as an E6 in A Co, 2d Batt. We ran into him again in Panama at JOTC before he went behind the fence. I know it will strike some as strange to say so but he was a very good guy--I had no about his politics at that time. Hell, maybe he didn't either. On a tangent, can you believe (today) that we worked with so many VN combat vets?

Murph, you blow me away. I do not remember him. Not at all. I had no idea that he was in 2d Bat. But then I never really excavated his bonafides beyond confirming that he was a real Ranger, a real SF'er, and a real member of the unit.

From what I know about his personal biography, he was radicalized by some chick.

Anyway.

We did have some pretty amazing Vietnam veterans among us. I used to stick to them like glue.

As much as George Conrad and I used to verbally abuse one another, that dude taught me a lot, far more than he even realized.

I busted my step-daughter being sneaky the other day. I told her to stop, to not even try it with me. "I am the number-one sneaky in this house," I said.

And it is true. George Conrad taught me how to be über-sneaky.

[Glebo]

Originally Posted by Guy

Was this while he was in Haiti?

I believe so, his tm/he did some fucked up shit and it got disbanded. I inherited a couple of guys off his tm into mine.

Good guys, just a f'up situation...

[sfmedicw9]

Originally Posted by snaquebite

Relief for cause when I was his Company SGM...loose cannon nut job...'nuff said

dont be talking bad about loose cannons - I have that in my signature block

I actually wasnt sure of who he was until I looked him up and saw his picture - I guess I knew him before he went to the dark side

Colorful - is how i remember him - never knew him to be out in left field though.

snaquebite - PM me - do you live in downtown Raeford by the Turkey plant?

[leopardprey]

From Wikpedia.. Interesting.

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, NC 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 volunteered for Ranger School, and after graduation, was reassigned to the 2nd Ranger Battalion on Fort Lewis, WA.

After two years with the 2d 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.

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 re-married 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 a Ranger captain that verged upon violence. Not long after, he was promoted to Master Sergeant, effectively changing his job description from SF 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).

Interesting, if this is his history, as do not see many going back and forth from SMU to Ranger to SF to Ranger Bat. back to SF, back to Ranger Bat. etc.

[magician]

The precision of that bio makes me believe that Goff wrote it.

I have no problem with that. It looks pretty objective to me.

But he did have quite a career. His career trajectory also illustrates how what happens on the dark side stays there. Nothing that happened while he was in JSOC appeared to impact his career on the white side.