6447: Goff replies to Simidor (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: "K. M. Ives" <kives@gateway.net>

I forwarded Simidor's open-minded response to the book he hasn't yet
read  to "Hideous Dreams"'s author Stan Goff. Here is his reply.
Kim Ives
----
>From: Karioka9@cs.com
>
>"Two" plus "two" still equal "four."  But adding Stan Goff, the G.I.
Joe in
>Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Peru, and the Stan Goff who
morphes
>into retirement as a hardcore revolutionary, doesn't come up to
"four." That
>Goff would have no qualms doing what the job called for in Grenada
and
>Panama, only to find his Damascus Road in the relatively bloodless
and
>peaceful Haiti invasion, defies belief.

If Mr. Simidor will take a look at the book before he rushes to
judgment,
he'll find nothing is as simple as the conclusions we reach in advance
of
examining the facts in all their complexity.


Stan Goff and Lynn Garrison, two
>special agents for US imperialism, two archetypes.  The ultimate G.I.
Joe vs.
>the ultimate mercenary.  Goff, the "worker in uniform," the "good
>revolutionary," for whom truth is "a matter of life and death," or so
says
>the "historian" Mark Jones.  This is the stuff of Workers World and
>Haiti-Progres, who like to cuddle with soldiers-of-fortune types and
>born-again bad guys like Ramsey Clark, Captain what's-his-name
Rockwood,
>Milosevic and the mercenary Arkan.  But there is a definite stench
(yon sant
>fondanman) in all that.

Archetype?  I've been many things and been called many things, but
this is
the first time I've been called an archetype.  I'm glad to see Mr.
Jung has
finally made it to the Corbett-list.  Sorry we can't all begin our
lives as
conscious and pure as others.  But then change, as it actually occurs,
both
personal and social, has always been a difficult reality for people
who are
restlessly trying to make the world conform to their own
often-ossified
theoretical constructs.  A lot of "leftists" desperately need to go
back
and revisit the dialectical part of their materialism.

Goff, quite frankly, has a lot to account for.  Not
>a foot soldier, he, but a leader of men in the bloody service of US
>imperialism.  A little anti-Haitian propaganda, after such a
successful
>career in "elite Ranger, Airborne, Special Forces, and
counter-terrorist
>units," surely would not register even as a blip on that man's radar
of
>horrors.  Something doesn't add up, but hell if I'm paying $12 for
the
>privilege of reading what should have been, if truth is the ultimate
>criterion, a very humble apology.

What does and doesn't add up can never be apparent in a rush to
judgment.
I do have a lot to account for.  Many of us do.  If you try to advance
a
revolution with only those who are without sin--to borrow a
construct--surely a lot of phrase-mongering will be necessary to fill
that
tremendous void.

>
>PS.  Bob, you will probably censor this but somebody has to say it.
>
>Daniel Simidor

It appears there has been a rush to judgment about censorship, as
well.
The thing that occurs to me about hyper-leftism is how lonely it must
be,
to always be the only one who truly understands.  Such self-isolation
must
be very sad.

Stan Goff
with VERY much to account for...


"I am not a Marxist."

                        -Karl Marx

"Mask no difficulties."

                        -Amilcar Cabral

"Am I to be cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?

                        -Audre Lorde