An Open Letter to US Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq (Stan Goff)

[katty]

continued at:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9158.htm

On Loyalty

An Open Letter to US Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq

By STAN GOFF

06/15/05 "Counterpunch.org" - - I was a soldier for most of the time between 1970 and 1996. I signed out on my retirement from 3rd Special Forces in Ft. Bragg. I had also served in 7th Special Forces, on three Ranger assignments, with Delta for almost four years, as a Cavalry Scout for a while, and in the 82nd Airborne Division as an infantryman. I started my career in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

I thugged around in eight different places in East Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where I pointed guns at people. Like you, I was an instrument of American foreign policies ­ policies controlled, then as now, by the rich.

In the course of that career, I heard everything you have heard and felt everything you have felt about "loyalty."

Tricky thing, loyalty.

Nowadays, when I talk with some of you, or when I hear conversations recorded with you, I hear many who have very serious reservations about these wars of occupation. I had more than reservations from the get-go about Iraq and Afghanistan, and I opposed them as hard as I could, and so did millions of other people around the world.

But that brain-dead piece of shit in the White House who is legally your boss, and all his handlers, starting with Vice President Dick "Halliburton" Cheney they sent you to do this thing anyway.

[Cha]

1. Wow! Stan Goff talks about

chimp the way I do..

"But that brain-dead piece of shit in the White House who is legally your boss and all his handlers, starting with Vice President Dick "Halliburton" Cheney they sent you to do this thing anyway."

[Kolesar]

3. "Some of them (sergeants) are dumber than dog shit. "

"My platoon sergeant tried to get us to violate the Geneva Convention, and when we resisted, he threatened us with punishment. He told us that'the Geneva Convention doesn't exist in Iraq, and that is in writing at the Brigade level.'"

You all know that this is bullshit, and if you didn't know, let me give you a news flash about some ­ not all, but some ­ military lifers; and this is coming from a military lifer. Some of them are dumber than dog shit. Some of them say things when they don't have the foggiest fucking idea what they are talking about. Some of them will say any goddamn thing to get you to do what they want you to do.


These are horrible times.

[Kolesar]

2. an officer ...might find himself on the wrong end of a Claymore mine

Stan Goff frames it for the young soldiers:

"But let's look at the bigger picture here, and for that I'll take you back to Vietnam, before many of you were born. We heard this same bullshit then. Almost verbatim. And do you know what one of the main contributing factors was for getting us out of that war?

We quit being good soldiers.

The United States military got to the point where it was no longer an effective fighting force, because US soldiers quit taking orders. It got to the point where an officer who was using his men's bodies to chase medals might find himself on the wrong end of a Claymore mine. Now I'm not advocating that again, and I hope we can stop this before it goes that far."

Stan Goff states that he was opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan, too.