I just finished Stan Goff’s fantastic book on the previous US invasion of Haiti, ‘Hideous Dream’. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand:
1) US military policy, and how it plays out on the ground
2) US policy towards Haiti, in the recent past and today
For those who don’t know, Goff was a Special Forces Master Sargent, the head of a team of soldiers in Haiti. When he went, he believed that the mission was what was advertised: disarm the paramilitaries and the army, stop the atrocities, and help the democratically elected regime return. He discovered that the real mission was anything but, but he was spit out by the system for trying to do some decent things locally within the letter of the law. It is an amazing story, extremely revealing on levels that are very difficult to get anywhere else. There is no one as solid politically as Goff who understands the US military as well as Goff and can write about it and talk about it as well as him, as far as I have come across.
This is not to say that I agree with everything he’s said or everything he’s written — just that I read everything he writes, and I read it very carefully, and have learned a lot from each and every piece, and a tremendous amount from this book. Please pick it up. I’m moving on to his ‘Full Spectrum Disorder’ when I get the chance.
