Greg Stoker condemns American empire, but his congressional campaign still presents his Ranger service and Afghanistan deployments as political authority.

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Greg Stoker is running for Congress in Texas’s 31st District as an anti-war candidate. His campaign attacks military contractors, condemns genocide and presents both major parties as servants of corporate power. Stoker has also built an audience through pro-Palestinian advocacy and criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

But the campaign’s preferred credential is not organizing, journalism or solidarity work. Its homepage announces Stoker as an “ANTI-WAR VETERAN” from the 75th Ranger Regiment. His explanation for running begins with four combat deployments in Afghanistan.

The contradiction is not that a former soldier changed his politics. People can reject institutions they once served. The contradiction is that Stoker condemns the U.S. military as an instrument of empire while continuing to use his place inside that instrument as political authority.

His military past is not presented as an implication requiring accountability. It is presented as the reason audiences should listen.

The Veteran Credential Is Not Neutral

“Veteran” is not a neutral biographical label in American political culture. It carries prestige before anyone asks which war the person served in, what that war did or who suffered under it.

The state calls military participation service. Politicians call it sacrifice. Media outlets treat it as proof of seriousness and character. The individual soldier becomes the emotional centre of the story while the people subjected to occupation become scenery.

Much of the American left reproduces a softer version of this hierarchy. The right says the soldier is a hero because he served. The left says the anti-war veteran possesses special authority because he witnessed the machinery from within.

Either way, the American remains the protagonist. Afghan testimony is displaced by an American account of discovering what Afghans already knew: the occupation was violent, humiliating and destructive.

Stoker’s campaign uses precisely this structure. It turns participation in the Afghanistan war into evidence that he understands war better than those who opposed it from the beginning or lived beneath it.

Afghanistan Was Not a Leadership Seminar

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and occupied it for nearly twenty years. The war killed civilians, displaced families, empowered warlords, filled detention sites and subjected communities to raids, airstrikes and counterinsurgency.

American political culture then converted participation in that system into domestic status. Veterans received not only material benefits but a ready-made language of courage, expertise and sacrifice. Electoral politics treats military biographies as proof that a candidate has already passed a test of leadership.

But Afghanistan was not a leadership seminar for future American candidates. It was a country subjected to invasion and occupation.

An anti-imperialist account must begin with those who endured the war, not with the American who later found a political career in explaining it. It should ask what the United States owes Afghanistan, not what authority an American acquired by deploying there.

Stoker’s campaign does the opposite. “Four combat deployments” functions as a résumé line. The institution he condemns supplies the experience that distinguishes him from other candidates.

Disavowal Means Surrendering the Reward

There is a difference between disavowing an institution and laundering the prestige it gave you.

Disavowal means naming the institution honestly, accepting responsibility for one’s participation and refusing to treat that participation as a claim to leadership. It means placing the people harmed by the institution ahead of the former participant’s redemption story.

Laundering means denouncing the institution while preserving its rewards. The dirty credential is washed through better politics and returned as credibility: trust me because I was there; follow me because I understand the machine; vote for me because I served.

Stoker knows the language of disavowal. He calls out militarism, contractors, Democrats, Republicans and U.S. support for Israel. Yet the Ranger identity remains at the centre of his campaign brand.

If military participation is evidence of a criminal system, it cannot simultaneously operate as proof that the participant deserves authority. A candidate cannot condemn the war machine and then ask voters to admire the expertise acquired by serving it.

That is not full disavowal. It is an imperial credential repackaged for an anti-war audience.

Palestine Is Not a Redemption Market

Stoker’s work for Palestine deserves to be judged on its own record. Opposing Israel’s destruction of Gaza, challenging U.S. complicity and joining solidarity efforts are better than silence or support for genocide.

But solidarity with one oppressed people cannot erase responsibility toward another. Afghans do not disappear because a former American soldier later supports Palestinians.

The familiar redemption story centres the American transformation: a soldier goes to war, witnesses violence, changes his views and becomes an anti-war advocate. The story ends when the American is redeemed. The people whose country was occupied remain unnamed.

That structure turns the suffering of people abroad into material for American moral development. It asks audiences to admire the former participant’s awakening instead of demanding repair for those who endured the occupation.

Palestine solidarity should deepen opposition to the entire U.S. war system. It should not provide a moral offset for participation in Afghanistan or a market in which American veterans exchange later activism for absolution.

The U.S. military and Israel’s violence are not separate systems. American weapons, funding, military infrastructure and diplomatic protection sustain Israeli power. A politics that opposes Israel while preserving the sacred authority of U.S. military service protects the root while criticizing one branch.

“Veterans First” Reproduces the Imperial Hierarchy

Veterans deserve healthcare, housing and dignity because everyone deserves healthcare, housing and dignity. Universal provision expands solidarity. Veteran-first politics does something else.

It says service to the military state creates a superior claim on public resources and sympathy. It divides people into those who earned care through military participation and those who must justify their needs some other way.

This hierarchy is part of how empire reproduces itself. The military offers benefits, education, employment, identity and social respect. The state enforces power abroad and rewards participation at home. The word “service” makes the exchange sound morally pure.

Served whom? Served what? Serving in Afghanistan did not mean serving the people subjected to occupation. It meant serving the armed institution carrying it out.

A left politics that retains veteran priority does not dismantle militarism. It manages militarism’s domestic reward system while promising kinder outcomes.

Testimony Is Not Automatic Leadership

Former soldiers can provide useful testimony. They can expose recruitment, training, institutional lies, obedience, dehumanization and the procedures through which civilian suffering is hidden.

But testimony does not confer automatic leadership. Knowing an institution from inside can help prosecute the institution. It does not place the former participant above those who resisted it, survived it or understood its purpose without joining.

The proper role is witness for the prosecution, not hero of a new redemption narrative.

Real accountability would also require material politics: reparations, restitution, demilitarization and support for reconstruction without imperial control. A former participant serious about anti-imperialism should use whatever platform he has to advance those demands and elevate Afghan voices.

He should ask what he can surrender, not what his service entitles him to claim.

The American Left Must Stop Centring the Perpetrator

This problem is larger than Greg Stoker. American anti-war politics repeatedly centres American guilt, trauma, courage, awakening and redemption. The empire is criticized, but the story still belongs to the imperial core.

The anti-war veteran is politically useful because he lets American audiences oppose war without surrendering the national protagonist. He remains more legible to media, more marketable to campaigns and more credible to voters than the people whose countries were destroyed.

That is not internationalism. International solidarity begins from the testimony, resistance and demands of people targeted by empire. It asks what the imperial core owes, not how the imperial core can feel better about itself.

American chauvinism does not always arrive with flags and troop worship. It can appear as anti-war branding that still treats the American soldier as the essential witness. It can call the military an imperial machine while using membership in that machine as a campaign credential.

The rhetoric changes. The hierarchy survives.

The Ranger Cannot Be the Anti-Imperialist Credential

Greg Stoker should be judged by his political program, organizing and conduct. His criticism of war and support for Palestine are legitimate subjects for evaluation. None of this means he is incapable of change.

But change cannot be measured only by whether a former soldier now says things anti-war audiences support. It must also be measured by whether he has rejected the prestige and authority attached to imperial service.

Stoker’s campaign has not done that. It foregrounds the Ranger, the deployments and the veteran identity. It condemns empire while treating experience in empire as proof of leadership.

Anti-imperialism is not a career rebrand. Participation in an occupation should create a responsibility to those harmed, not a superior claim to speak over them.

If Stoker wants to break with the war machine, the break must include its domestic rewards. The campaign should stop selling the Ranger and start naming the debt.

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Sources

• Greg Stoker for Texas, official campaign website, accessed January 29, 2026 — campaign branding, military biography and stated reasons for running.
• Middle East Eye, “Former US soldiers turned Palestine advocates make a run for Congress,” January 27, 2026 — Stoker’s candidacy and Palestine advocacy.
• Green Party of the United States, “Veteran Anti-War Activist Greg Stoker Running For Congress In Texas,” January 29, 2026 — campaign launch and political positioning.
• Ballotpedia, “Greg Stoker,” accessed January 29, 2026 — candidate and election information.