Author Archives: Rayn

The following correspondence originally took place on my Facebook wall, upon my post, “First U.S. Official Yet Hands in Resignation in Protest to Afghan War!“…

Former Foreign Service Employee and Marine, Matthew Hoh

Rayn: 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

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/

Kenny C.: would u actually attend a protest?

Raymond M.: Protests can be counter effective if your primary motive is consciousness-raising. Your audacity might turn off people who are unfamiliar with your cause and need to be educated about what’s at stake before being subjected to all the noise.

Kenny C.: not like protesting does anything anyway, they dont care..and soon enough when the fema camps are ready to go, they are gonna take us and send us to modern concentration camps!

Rayn: To answer your question, Kenny, I don’t think I would attend a protest march, unless it was privately coordinated to be highly, independently videotaped, as police have been known to plant agent provocateurs into marches in order to cause havoc, enabling them to dispatch SWAT teams to the scene to unleash brutal, and even lethal, force. It’s one thing to clearly put yourself on the line for your rights, but it’s another thing to have police beat you down, then hit you with bogus charges, while the mainstream media paints you out to be a violent criminal, or an anarchist, with most believing it. Having a gigantic propoganda machine at their disposal, and the ability to reach vast audiences, the media is usually able to hijack the point of the public protest right out from underneath the protesters, and hand it over to the very small minority of fringe, or extremist elements that are there, successfully sullying the public’s views of even the most reputable cause.

Watch the following videos to understand what I mean: (Click Here to Continue Reading This Post) →