I originally posted the following information and commentary onto my Facebook wall…
Former Foreign Service Employee and Marine, Matthew Hoh
First U.S. Official Yet Hands in Resignation in Protest to Afghan War!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009102603447
(Karen DeYoung, Washington Post) – When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.
A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.
But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.
(Read entire article here…)
My Commentary: Now, this is CHANGE I can BELIEVE IN! There’s nothing like an honest-to-goodness change of heart! Especially, after some good ol’-fashioned first-hand experience!
According to the September 2009 resignation letter of Foreign Service Officer, former Marine captain, & former civilian Department of Defense employee Matthew Hoh, he has “lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” having “doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy.” His resignation “is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.” He cannot “see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures or resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.”
Seeing the current Afghani administration as corrupt – seated by lawless drug lords and war criminals, bound by sweet-heart deals, and wrought with election fraud – Matthew feels that “our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency’s true nature, reminds [him] horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology.” Well put, Matthew! And, well done!
And, for those interested in reading Matthew Hoh’s full resignation letter, go here:
http://original.antiwar.com/news/2009/10/27/resignation-letter-from-us-foreign-service-officer-matthew-p-hoh/
