Stan Goff was sent to Haiti with a U.S. invasion and tried to do what he thought was the right thing. His idealistic response to his presence in Haiti paints a positive portrait of what might be accomplished on a military "peacekeeping mission." And in his increasing alienation from his comrades, he also shows that this idealism was the exception. What seems to be at the crux of the failure of the military as a force for maintaining peace is racism: a failure to empathize with and respect the other.

I emailed Stan to ask him some questions after I finished his book.

Stan,

We corresponded briefly at the beginning of the year and then I mailed you a palindrome. As I promised, I read Hideous Dream. Whenever I finish a book, especially a book that doesn't get much attention in the mainstream media, I write a paragraph about it and post it to the web at spinelessbooks.com/william/books, in order to draw other readers' attention to the book. Instead of a paragraph, I have written some questions, which I invite you to answer if you wish, and, if you wish, I will put your answers on my site. If you would prefer to respond just to me that's okay too, I won't publish your words without your permission. And if you don't want to respond, that's okay too. Hopefully it will be of interest to you to know what your book has made me wonder.

I'd be happy to answer some questions. Thanks for thinking of me.

Disclaimer: I read the book only once (the whole thing), I have no military experience, and this is really the first book I've read about Haiti. I read it because I care-both about ending violence and redistributing wealth and even (some perverse curiosity) what my tax money is spent on. I think it's a good book for what it's worth and I'm glad I read it.

I am, too. (-:

Questions:

The book refers to the "cancer" of NGOs without providing much detail. Which organizations were you referring to and why were they harmful?

Haiti has more NGOs per capita than any other nation in this hemisphere. And if you look at any particular NGO with regard to its work, the majority are doing something that, in itself, is unarguably positive. A reforestation project. A weekly breakfast program for 100 kids. A small school. A community tool locker. But when you put them into a larger context, the effect they have changes. The primary leadership comes from outside the affected community, often from another country, and they often have (for Haiti) pretty fat salaries, which they are disinclined to jeapordize by confronting systemic problems.They will ameliorate a few of the effects of poverty, for example, but they are not keen to question the economic and political structures that continually reproduce the poverty.

The secondary leadership, the Haitian leadership in these organizations, get jobs. That's a tremendously influential phenomenon in a place where unemployment is approaching 80 percent. These Haitians are generally young and educated and very bright, and this work gives them the impression that they are doing a lot of good - which at one level they are, but they are contained, as it were. We all have the tendency to rationalize our actions, and the tendency that emerges among this group is to mistrust or oppose direct political agitation and class struggle, that systemic resistance, because it threatens their "thing", then to adopt ideologies of so-called civil society, self-help and other non-revolutionary, and anti-revolutionary, modes of thought, to rationalize their collaboration with the status quo. The net effect is that they serve the larger system by de facto containment of revolutionary initiative, and they create a "brain drain" from community-based and class-based modes of resistance to the status quo, into these NGOs.

I won't even get started on the beehive of evangelical churches that, in my opinion, opportunistically take advantage of this people's desperate circumstance to peddle salvation laced with right-wing social philosophy. These folks are straight-up racists and imperialists, like the creepy preacher in my book who gave us our "intelligence" briefing. I have a visceral dislike for these types, and would gladly send them off the island in flimsy watercraft.

By coincidence, immediately upon finishing Hideous Dream I read Black Hawk Down, the events of which are referred to in Hideous Dream. What struck me was the contrast between the animosity felt toward Americans by Somalians versus what seemed to be the welcoming gratitude of the Haitians, especially given that both missions were meant to remove a violent leader from a nation beset by starvation (although presumably Aidid enjoyed more popular support than did Cedras). Can you explain this difference?

There is really no comparison between the two. Somalia is a national fiction, a vestige of colonialism, where the geopolitical boundaries that define Somalia were imposed on multiple social formations by European conquerers. Haitians were forged into a single nationality (in the social, not political sense), that is, common history, common culture, common language, etc., by the experience of slavery and the revoltuion itself. And Haiti's independence was won through a revolution 200 years ago, while Somalia was an outgrowth of the post-WWII global restructuring. In Haiti there was a coup that consolidated one leadership clique over a homogeneous nation. In Somalia, there was a multi-faceted civil resource war between various kinship groups organized into wargelds. In Somalia, the US intervened as a new variable in a situation where no victory could be definitive, and every action simply reshuffled the strategic deck in some way. It was impossible from the start, as was borne out. The same situation is developing in Afghanistan, where the US will eventually be humiliated again. In Haiti, the release of the population, however brief, from a singular and particularly ruthless regime - which by the way was installed with the assistance of the US three years earlier - was expressed in the initial outpouring of gratitude. But Haitians have a saying. Just because your enemy pulls you out of the well, doesn't mean he isn't your enemy any more.

(The author of Black Hawk Down goes into great deal about the violence but doesn't dwell much on its causes, leaving the careless reader free to assume that Africans are just savage nutty people). (To Bowden's credit, on pp. 70-74 he describes how Habr Gidr elders are slaughtered by TOW missiles, from the perspective of Somalians, certainly a motivation for the violence against Americans that ensued (he doesn't explain who made the decision to attack the building with helicopters or why though))

I participated in Task Force Ranger, and have written a long essay about it, relating that experience to the grandiose ambitions of the Bush administration, entitled "Full Spectrum Entropy: Special Operations in a Special Period." It's my first really theoretical piece on military operations. I can make it available to people who are interested. The racism of long standing caricatures of Black people doesn't need any explication from me.

You describe the ideological differences between yourself and the other men in your team that eventually led them to file complaints against you, but it was still hard for me to grasp the core of their animosity. It seemed to involve racism, laziness, cynicism, and perhaps some measure of actual hurt caused by you losing your temper, but all of that still seems insufficient to cause their actions (I freely admit to being naive), especially considering your team's reputation for effectiveness and what you describe as a good rapport with the Haitians. What caused them to want to get you in trouble?

I hope I took responsibility for my personal and my leadership failings in the book. I have no patience for the kind of self-reverential narcissism of what passes for journalism these days, and believe the goal of serious people must be engaged in a constant critical process. In 50 years, I'll be dead as a rock, and what people might think of me is pretty much irrelevant. But the lessons that might be gleaned from the whole saga may still be relevant. I don't know. The reason it was writtenin the first person is that this was the only perspective I had.

Having thus disclaimed, I suggest we capitalize Racism and not homogenize in a list of other nouns. In a review of my book by another member fo the Task Force, who served with me in 3rd Special Forces, which is on the Amazon site, he says this is the story of my "becoming Black." That should tell us something. In the same review, he deines he is a racist. This was the fault line between the team and me, from beginning to end. I was transgressing their entire worldview by valuing Haitians in the same way they might value white Americans (or honorary Aryans, which many of them were), by acknowledging the fundamental humanity of Haitians, and by demanding that they behave accordingly. Ali's story, in particular, it telling. These folks who the military has brought into the Aryan club - Persian, Puertoriceno, Chicano - are hypersensitive to the condition of membership, negrophobia. They often out-negrophobe and out-patriot Anglos to prove themselves. It's a form of internalized oppression.

What has happened politically in Haiti since the period described in the book?

Gosh! A lot. I have another essay I wrote on the 2000 Aristide inauguration that backgrounds it, again available for those who are interested. Basically, though, Aristide has emerged against US/OAS machinations as the head of a new ruling party, progressive in the beginning, but now becoming reactionary. The most useful comparisons to his role are with Sun Yat-sen in pre-revolutionay China and Juan Peron of Argentina. At one historical conjuncture, populist-nationalism puts him in fromt of the masses, the embodiment of their legitimate aspirations for self-determination. Now, the masses have passed him by, as he has passed into a more conservative, cautious, conciliatory, self-serving, and opportunistic mode - and there is a popular rebellion again brewing in Haiti. "Haiti Progres" is a tri-lingual newspaper, that can be accessed online, that is very good at keeping people abreast of goings-on there.

Your actions in Haiti, despite the cynical context in which you undertook them, actually made me hopeful that the American military might be able to undertake something that might legitimately be called a peacekeeping mission, restoring something that might actually be democracy. I had never considered that to be a possibility before. Do you think it is possible for the military to reduce violence and give countries back to their citizens, and if so under what conditions?

No. Not the American military. The mere fact of intervention is a violation of sovereignty and national self-determination. The reason I was able to think of this as a possibility back then was that I didn't understand the phenomenon of imperialism. It is not merely an epithet, but a definable social reality. The US military is first, last, and always, an instrument of imperialism. The question of democracy is equally problematic. Elections do not equal democracy, and in many cases - because they are manipulatable processes - they serve at the antithesis of popular democracy. Haiti doesn't need elections. It needs a revolution.

How might we work toward a world in which wealth is distributed equitably without violence, especially those of us who aren't qualified to participate in a violent uprising (a tactic you seem at times to endorse for the Haitians)?

We don't live in that kind of world. I suggest reading four works just to begin: "Capital", by Marx & Engels, "The Globalization Gamble: The Dollar-Wall Street Regime", by Peter Gowan, "The New Imperialism", by Robert Biel, and "Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale", by Maria Mies, just to get a glimpse of the inner workings of our system. Our situation in the US is different than in Haiti. Revolution requires a certain historical confluence, and without it, violence is destructive adventurism that sets back the struggle. There is no bumper-sticker solution to your question. But in the final analysis, violence is not the first resort of the powerless. It is a necessary adjunct to exploitation and domination. Why does the US need to maintain a military presence in the majority of the world's nations? And what is the military, but an institution of organized violence?

Are you planning to write other books?

If I get the time. I want to write one about sex... not the erotic variety, but one that explores gender and class.

Are there books by other people you would recommend to me?

The books mentioned above, for starters. Also, "Race Against Empire", by Penny M. Von Eschen. Anything at all by Robin D. G. Kelley, Angela Davis, or Stephen Jay Gould.

Thanks for the note.

Stay well.