U.S Official Resigns Over War in Afghanistan

Matthew Hoh, a State Department officer who was serving as Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S government in Zabul Province, recently tendered his resignation in dramatic fashion.
His literary resignation letter (it includes the word "Pollyannaish") lays out many of the reasons against the continuation of the current Afghanistan War policy that we have written about here, including the corruption of the Karzai adminsitration, the lack of a clear military mission, and a combat strategy that allows the Taliban to turn locals against the United States, all at an enormous financial and human cost. Hoh scoffs at the announced goal of staying in Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda, a strategy which would "require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc."

Hoh, despite his admission that he wants his "fifteen minutes to be up", is highly eloquent in rebutting false presumptions being used to continue the war in an online session in which he answered questions from Washington Post readers. There are too many good answers to cpoy and paste them all here, but in response to one hackneyed set of questions about remembering 9/11 and the rights of Afghan women, Hoh responds, "I disagree and I think it is emotional arguments like this that keep us tied to Afghanistan and to a policy that fuels the insurgency as well as adds credence to calls for global Islamic jihad." I recommend folks read the whole session.