US Diplomat Resigns Over Afghan War
Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain and lately a Foreign Service official in Afghanistan has decided to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he believes simply fuels the insurgency.
“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” wrote Hoh. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”
Hoh also wrote that many Afghans are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there – a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected.
In 2006 Matthew Hoh was called up to active duty from the reserves to serve in Iraq. He commanded a Marine company in Anbar province. In 2008 he rejoined the Foreign Service and went to Afghanistan’s Zabul Province, on the border with Pakistan.
Soon after the August 20, 2009 presidential elections Hoh became so seriously disenchanted that he wrote: “multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, “[the insurgency] is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified.”
Although we generally agree with Matthew Hoh’s assessment of the situation and his decision, there probably isn’t much that we can add to this.
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We Americans are quite accustomed to a life in a very civilized world. As voters, we move consistently toward a government with policies which maintain that kind of environment. In Afghanistan this kind of comfortable security is much less sustainable — for everyone. The idea of “not liking” folks from outside the village moving around in the midst of one’s known acquaintances, although not particularly understandable from our perspective, makes sense.
At counter point, it has been argued that the attacks of 9/11 originated there. That means that individuals — local or otherwise — from those same villages “visited” our village (New York). The locals may have — or may not have — been sympathetic to the ideas behind that attack, making the collateral casualties they are now suffering fall into a corresponding “more fair” or “less fair” category as seen by us from our living rooms.
That is the unavoidable nature of military conflict. Generally speaking, such action is never designed to limit US military casualties or collateral damage to a degree which might make it seem more acceptable to civilians at home. Military conflict, once initiated, remains disturbingly single focused and unilateral until it ends.
As civilian sponsors of the conflict, it falls to us to:
1. demand accurate and objective intelligence about all aspects of the conflict,
2. make a reasoned decision about the relative value of our losses compared to possible advantages of prevailing, and,
3. constantly question the “axioms” which have been presented to support the effort in the first place.
This is all quite comfortably abstract until we add the fact that a great many Americans are very suspicious about 9/11 itself. Although Major Hoh most likely acted quite honorably in his resignation, there remains the larger question of whether or not the nation is acting rationally or honorably.
Good points, Chad. Thanks!