In 2013, VICE spoke to Matthew VanDyke, an American documentary-maker who decided to pick up a gun and fight against Gaddafi in the Libyan revolution. His story is extraordinary. Taking his place at the frontline in a recent Middle-eastern conflicts, Matthew lives a life that makes Hemingway's look a little dull. He's traveled North Africa and the Middle-East by motorbike, visited Bin Laden's home, and been taken as a prisoner of war. (He escaped when rebels and other prisoners freed him.)In the two years since his last conversation with VICE, VanDyke has seen two of his close friends, James Foley and Steven Sutloff, murdered. He has set up his own private security firm, Sons of Liberty International (SOLI), an organization that is actively fighting ISIS in Iraq, and he's kickstarted humanitarian projects and trained hundreds of Iraqi militiamen.
Anyone who kills friends of mine has made me their target. I won't stop until ISIS is destroyed.
Okay we fucking get it, MGSV just fucking came out, I'm tired of fucking hearing about itBetween here and /k/ it's getting fucking annoying.
Anyway, VanDyke set up SoL a while back, this isn't really news.He's a fucking idiot who is going to get people killed. He has no military training and, as anyone who's seen his doc can attest, is completely incompetent. He can't shoot for shit and has no understanding of combat tactics. All the man has going for him is an absurd amount of sheer luck.
Although my primary duties are leading SOLI and serving as an advisor to militia leadership, I also participated in training the NPU on occasion, and assisted with the development of the training curriculum and its implementation. The training programs, however, are designed and run by our ex-military trainers, as this is their field of expertise.
So far all of our personnel have been US military veterans, though we have had applicants from the UK and Europe. We have nearly 1,000 applicants, most US veterans and some of whom are retired high-ranking officers.Applicants also include former Special Forces and other exceptional candidates who could make a small fortune in military contracting but are willing to volunteer for SOLI because they believe in the cause of helping the defenseless to defend themselves and defeat ISIS.