Good Morning Caucus99. What are you up to today? I have to take it one day at a time.

This piece is from Mother Jones, an article that made me sad to say the least. It's by Jenna McLaughlin This Guy from Baltimore is Raising a Christian Army to fight ISIS. That's a man from my extended neighborhood... so I thought I should read what he is all about.

If you just look at his company's name, which has the impressive wording "Sons of Liberty International (SOLI)", you might want to give him a lot of credit for trying to do good. A freedom fighter for the whole world. What could be wrong about that?

There are many ways to "use" US Veterans, who are desperate. Tell me, if you like Van Dyke's way of interactions with US Veterans. Do you think there is something abusive in his activities? The story is long and I have some difficulties to excerpt less of the article to keep the story understandable. It's a bit much of quotation, forgive me for it.

In late February, a Baltimore-born, self-proclaimed freedom fighter named Matthew VanDyke beamed into Greta Van Susteren's Fox News show from Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region. A few days earlier, he had announced on Facebook that he was in Iraq to "raise and train a Christian army to fight" ISIS and that he had formed a company called Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) to provide "free military consulting and training to local forces fighting terrorists and oppressive regimes." With ISIS on the march across Iraq and Syria, the story of an American taking an on-the-ground role in the fight sparked a media frenzy. VanDyke, who is 35 and holds a master's degree in security studies from Georgetown, was soon featured by media outlets across the country, including the New York Times, USA Today the Baltimore Sun, and MSNBC.

VanDyke is famous. He is a fighter. A film was made about him. And he had his own movie production ambitions and thought about staging his own plot in that film by being a fighter in an insurgency of his own into a war szenerie. (my interpretation).

This wasn't the first time VanDyke had become a media sensation. A few years earlier VanDyke had made international headlines after he was captured in Libya, where he had been fighting alongside rebel forces to overturn the regime of Moammar Qaddafi. ... A film about VanDyke (Shoot and Run), who had traveled across the Arab world by motorcycle, won best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. ....
"So, tell me what we can do to help?" Fox's Van Susteren asked VanDyke,. He explained. "I've put about $12,000 of my own money in and I'm going broke doing this, so we really need donations from the public to help these Christians defend themselves and take the fight against ISIS....."

Getting into war activities was a natural decision, as government has failed its missions so badly. Right. A movie maker's mission is certainly more successful.

Asked how he had prepared for this training operation, in terms of obtaining permission from US or Iraqi authorities, VanDyke told 'Mother Jones' that initially "nobody was sanctioning it." He added:

"Part of the whole purpose of SOLI is to step in where governments had failed, so going and asking permission from the governments that have already failed is not particularly productive."

The guy runs an "honorable" non-profit security business, of course.

VanDyke says his company is "crowdfunding a war against ISIS." And SOLI notes on its website that it is "the first security contracting firm run as a non-profit."(A lie).... VanDyke won't disclose how much he has raised or spent. Doing so, he maintains, would put lives in danger:

"I can't give a number for how much we raised, because I don't want our personnel kidnapped…The moment we announce what's in the account, then our people become more of a target, and then we get grabbed and that's what they're gonna ask for."

Good explanation, Mr. VanDyke.
Last summer, ISIS began targeting the Assyrians of northern Iraq. Slaughter and beheadings of journalists took place. VanDyke felt the deep urge to jump on the occasion to show his true patriotism and colors.

Horrified by the slaughter—he began contacting Iraqi Christian political leaders and offering his services to train a militia to repel the Islamic State from their territory. VanDyke wasn't the only one with this idea to help the Assyrians defend themselves . A California-based nonprofit group called the American Mesopotamian Organization (AMO) had undertaken a similar effort, dubbed "Restore Nineveh Now," to help the Assyrians defend themselves. Both VanDyke and the AMO would separately begin working with an upstart militia group that eventually dubbed itself the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU).

Militia building ain't easy. So you go back to Veterans with experience and a dysfunctional civilian life:

VanDyke, who has no formal military training, began recruiting US military veterans to forge the NPU into a well-disciplined fighting force. One of his first calls was to Michael Cunningham, a retired Army sergeant, who was featured in Restrepo, Sebastian Junger's 2010 documentary about the fierce fighting in Afghanistan's Korengal valley. VanDyke and Cunningham had met at a film festival, where Marshall Curry's documentary on VanDyke, Point and Shoot, was screened alongside Restrepo

Now it's quite telling how an ambitious film and documentary producer uses his actors from their previous war documentaries for his own advantage.

"How do you feel about going over and training a Christian army to fight ISIS?" Cunningham recalls VanDyke asking him. Cunningham, who was finding it difficult to adjust to civilian life, tentatively signed on. ... VanDyke had to get formal approval from the State Department. The Arms Export and Control Act requires US citizens to obtain State Department licensing before offering formal or informal military services to foreigners. This includes providing training or military equipment.
...
Cunningham says he repeatedly pressed VanDyke to obtain State Department approval. "I asked him every month leading up to our departure," he recalls. "He was like, 'No problem, I know all these people, and everything will be fine.'"
...
Cunningham's relationship fell apart, he was unemployed, and he was crashing on the couches of friends and relatives.

"I could be homeless, or go to Iraq," he remembers. "So I left."(to join VanDyke)

The funding on AMO's side went well apparently.

The AMO would eventually amass at least $250,000 to fund the militia. ...The AMO planned to use some of the funds to hire a military contractor to train the NPU in basic security procedures and community policing techniques.

The funding for SOLI not so much.

VanDyke's arrival on the scene caught the AMO off guard. "I did not know that he existed," says David Lazar, the AMO's founder. "I had never heard of him." Lazar asked Gardner to keep tabs on VanDyke and check his background. ... Cunningham put the recruits (25) through a US-military style boot camp. According to a training plan obtained by Mother Jones, the program also provided instruction in "room clearing," "military operations in urban terrain," "mortar employment," and "communicating and coordinating targets."
...
SOLI's training program was "secret," VanDyke says, "and it actually remained that way for December, January, and February." he ultimately revealed it ...because he was running out of money and needed to solicit funds to keep the project going.

And so it goes with your non-profit adventures and no appetite to use more of your own money.
The State Department apparently had no clue, and VanDyke seems to play a dubious game, which somehow works if the government lacks transparency for its procedures:

"When we went to the State Department and told them we'd been in country over a month training this force, it was a surprise to them," he notes. "Essentially we were running a covert camp." ....He stated in an email that "Sons of Liberty International complied with US registration requirements prior to signing a contract with the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), as required by U.S. law." The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls—with which all US-based military and security firms planning to provide services overseas must register—does not make public its registrants. But according to that office, approved registrants receive a certification form that they are free to share. VanDyke did not respond to a request to provide this documentation.

It's easy to use Veterans and of course they have to work for free.

Soon after Christmas in 2014, the initial group of 25 NPU recruits graduated from SOLI's training program. Because this contingent would be far too large for Cunningham to train on his own, he and VanDyke agreed that he would recruit a few friends—all of them US military veterans with experience in the Middle East—to join him in Iraq. The men would be unpaid.

"They were volunteers, and they knew they were volunteers from the start," VanDyke says. "We were going to try to fundraise, and if we fundraised, we had maybe the possibility of paying trainers in the future. But none of these guys came over expecting payment and wanting payment…The entire point of SOLI was to be all-volunteer."

Well the story goes on and on, clearly showing tensions between VanDyke's operation and Cunningham.

By mid-January, with the second training program underway, Cunningham and the other trainers grew increasingly worried that they might be operating in Iraq illegally. ...The trainers complained that VanDyke's operation was disorganized, unprofessional—and possibly illegal. ...the AMO urged the NPU to cut its ties with VanDyke. The militia's leaders agreed to do so after SOLI's second training program ended in early February... By mid-February, Cunningham and the three trainers he'd recruited quit.

"Freedom fighter" VanDyke had the nerves to insult and threaten Cunningham after the separation. The ugly face of abusing the people, who are dependent, easily engaged in by "patriotic film producers".

VanDyke told him he had "fucked up real bad" for quitting. In a subsequent conversation, Cunningham claims, VanDyke made a loosely veiled threat: "I'll never forget: He says, 'I met with my [Kurdish secret] police friend and I told him about the situation between you and me, and he wanted to do something about it…You know [they] don't have the best human rights record. I tried to call it off.'

Officially the NPU released a statement of separation as of Feb. 19.

Gevara Zaya, the NPU's military director, also sent a letter directly to VanDyke. "Your services are no longer being employed in any capacity," he wrote. "Please refrain from using any image, title, or reference to the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU) in any capacity, commercial or otherwise." (VanDyke says he never received this letter.)

Here the story line goes from freedom fighter, honorable services to a camcorder misadventure.

The AMO was dismayed and continued to press NPU leaders to disassociate themselves from him. "The Assyrian people have suffered enough," Gardner says. "What they need are selfless men and women who have the skill and dedication to build a unified and peaceful future for all of Iraq's people. VanDyke's misadventures with a camcorder will likely have the opposite effect."

Right, but see the camcording video producer just can't let go by an opportunity to use other people to work for him and stage the storyline and "facts", he intends to film. True to real factual news reporting via a cool documentary.

Undeterred after his break with the NPU, VanDyke was meeting with other Christian forces in Iraq to pitch his services, according to the release.

"SOLI looks forward to its next mission to support the Christian community of Iraq in their fight against ISIS

?," he said.

This article gave me some insight of how an otherwise honorable profession, documentary productions, can go over to the dark side by actions of an overambitious "young filmmakers. There are so many prizes waiting for him. War hero status, sacrificed blood, bombs, human misery, destruction, everything filmed authentically and very, very close-up to make it go under your skin. You just "helped" a little bit to "stage a little insurgency" so that you have something to make a film with.

I had no idea that from shooting with a camera to shooting with a rifle in a self-made militia group on the base of abusing Veterans as actors is a line that is so easily crossed. Do not forget those militia "movie" makers can kill and shoot real people. They do it almost uncontrolled from the government and they don't pay their employees. They potentially kill civilians, represent themselves as heroes and produce a "war porn film" for the pleasure of a pop-corn munching audience.

Am I too harsh? Did I misunderstand the situations? I am so tired of "war porn producing" documentary style video producers. You tell me. Please. Am I unfair? It is the spectacle that counts. Something Chris Hedges also wrote about in detail. May be I write about that next time.

Share with what is on your mind. I like to be distracted from what I just wrote about. Have all a good day.