U.S. Official Resigns over Afghan War

Washington Post: Foreign Service Officer and Former Marine Captain says he no Longer Knows Why Nation is Fighting

(Washington Post)  This story was written by Karen DeYoung .

---

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.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "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."

Read the Letter

The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him."

While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?"

Hoh accepted the argument and the job, but changed his mind a week later. "I recognize the career implications, but it wasn't the right thing to do," he said in an interview Friday, two days after his resignation became final.
"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.

"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."

CBSNews.com Special Report: Afghanistan

But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, 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. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops, Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "

"I realize what I'm getting into . . . what people are going to say about me," he said. "I never thought I would be doing this."

'Uncommon bravery'

Hoh's journey -- from Marine, reconstruction expert and diplomat to war protester -- was not an easy one. Over the weeks he spent thinking about and drafting his resignation letter, he said, "I felt physically nauseous at times."

His first ambition in life was to become a firefighter, like his father. Instead, after graduation from Tufts University and a desk job at a publishing firm, he joined the Marines in 1998. After five years in Japan and at the Pentagon -- and at a point early in the Iraq war when it appeared to many in the military that the conflict was all but over -- he left the Marines to join the private sector, only to be recruited as a Defense Department civilian in Iraq. A trained combat engineer, he was sent to manage reconstruction efforts in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.

"At one point," Hoh said, "I employed up to 5,000 Iraqis" handing out tens of millions of dollars in cash to construct roads and mosques. His program was one of the few later praised as a success by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

In 2005, Hoh took a job with BearingPoint, a major technology and management contractor at the State Department, and was sent to the Iraq desk in Foggy Bottom. When the U.S. effort in Iraq began to turn south in early 2006, he was recalled to active duty from the reserves. He assumed command of a company in Anbar province, where Marines were dying by the dozens.

Hoh came home in the spring of 2007 with citations for what one Marine evaluator called "uncommon bravery," a recommendation for promotion, and what he later recognized was post-traumatic stress disorder. Of all the deaths he witnessed, the one that weighed most heavily on him happened in a helicopter crash in Anbar in December 2006. He and a friend, Maj. Joseph T. McCloud, were aboard when the aircraft fell into the rushing waters below Haditha dam. Hoh swam to shore, dropped his 90 pounds of gear and dived back in to try to save McCloud and three others he could hear calling for help.
He was a strong swimmer, he said, but by the time he reached them, "they were gone."

'You can't sleep'

It wasn't until his third month home, in an apartment in Arlington, that it hit him like a wave. "All the things you hear about how it comes over you, it really did. . . . You have dreams, you can't sleep. You're just, 'Why did I fail? Why didn't I save that man? Why are his kids growing up without a father?' "

Like many Marines in similar situations, he didn't seek help. "The only thing I did," Hoh said, "was drink myself blind."
What finally began to bring him back, he said, was a television show -- "Rescue Me" on the FX cable network -- about a fictional New York firefighter who descended into "survivor guilt" and alcoholism after losing his best friend in the World Trade Center attacks.
He began talking to friends and researching the subject online. He visited McCloud's family and "apologized to his wife . . . because I didn't do enough to save them," even though his rational side knew he had done everything he could.

Hoh represented the service at the funeral of a Marine from his company who committed suicide after returning from Iraq. "My God, I was so afraid they were going to be angry," he said of the man's family. "But they weren't. All they did was tell me how much he loved the Marine Corps."

"It's something I'll carry for the rest of my life," he said of his Iraq experiences. "But it's something I've settled, I've reconciled with."
Late last year, a friend told Hoh that the State Department was offering year-long renewable hires for Foreign Service officers in Afghanistan. It was a chance, he thought, to use the development skills he had learned in Tikrit under a fresh administration that promised a new strategy.

'Valley-ism'

In photographs he brought home from Afghanistan, Hoh appears as a tall young man in civilian clothes, with a neatly trimmed beard and a pristine flak jacket. He stands with Eikenberry, the ambassador, on visits to northern Kunar province and Zabul, in the south. He walks with Zabul Gov. Mohammed Ashraf Naseri, confers with U.S. military officers and sits at food-laden meeting tables with Afghan tribal leaders. In one picture, taken on a desolate stretch of desert on the Pakistani border, he poses next to a hand-painted sign in Pashto marking the frontier.

The border picture was taken in early summer, after he arrived in Zabul following two months in a civilian staff job at the military brigade headquarters in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. It was in Jalalabad that his doubts started to form.

Hoh was assigned to research the response to a question asked by Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an April visit. Mullen wanted to know why the U.S. military had been operating for years in the Korengal Valley, an isolated spot near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan where a number of Americans had been killed. Hoh concluded that there was no good reason. The people of Korengal didn't want them; the insurgency appeared to have arrived in strength only after the Americans did, and the battle between the two forces had achieved only a bloody stalemate.

Korengal and other areas, he said, taught him "how localized the insurgency was. I didn't realize that a group in this valley here has no connection with an insurgent group two kilometers away." Hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups across Afghanistan, he decided, had few ideological ties to the Taliban but took its money to fight the foreign intruders and maintain their own local power bases.

"That's really what kind of shook me," he said. "I thought it was more nationalistic. But it's localism. I would call it valley-ism."

'Continued . . . assault'

Zabul is "one of the five or six provinces always vying for the most difficult and neglected," a State Department official said. Kandahar, the Taliban homeland, is to the southwest and Pakistan to the south. Highway 1, the main link between Kandahar and Kabul and the only paved road in Zabul, bisects the province. Over the past year, the official said, security has become increasingly difficult.

By the time Hoh arrived at the U.S. military-run provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the Zabul capital of Qalat, he said, "I already had a lot of frustration. But I knew at that point, the new administration was . . . going to do things differently. So I thought I'd give it another chance." He read all the books he could get his hands on, from ancient Afghan history, to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, through Taliban rule in the 1990s and the eight years of U.S. military involvement.

Frank Ruggiero, the Kandahar-based regional head of the U.S. PRTs in the south, considered Hoh "very capable" and appointed him the senior official among the three U.S. civilians in the province. "I always thought very highly of Matt," he said in a telephone interview.

In accordance with administration policy of decentralizing power in Afghanistan, Hoh worked to increase the political capabilities and clout of Naseri, the provincial governor, and other local officials. "Materially, I don't think we accomplished much," he said in retrospect, but "I think I did represent our government well."

Naseri told him that at least 190 local insurgent groups were fighting in the largely rural province, Hoh said. "It was probably exaggerated," he said, "but the truth is that the majority" are residents with "loyalties to their families, villages, valleys and to their financial supporters."

Hoh's doubts increased with Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, marked by low turnout and widespread fraud. He concluded, he said in his resignation letter, that the war "has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency."

With "multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups," he wrote, 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."

American families, he said at the end of the letter, "must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more."

'Their problem to solve'

Ruggiero said that he was taken aback by Hoh's resignation but that he made no effort to dissuade him. "It's Matt's decision, and I honored, I respected" it, he said. "I didn't agree with his assessment, but it was his decision."

Eikenberry expressed similar respect, but declined through an aide to discuss "individual personnel matters."

Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., Eikenberry's deputy, said he met with Hoh in Kabul but spoke to him "in confidence. I respect him as a thoughtful man who has rendered selfless service to our country, and I expect most of Matt's colleagues would share this positive estimation of him, whatever may be our differences of policy or program perspectives."

This week, Hoh is scheduled to meet with Vice President Biden's foreign policy adviser, Antony Blinken, at Blinken's invitation.
If the United States is to remain in Afghanistan, Hoh said, he would advise a reduction in combat forces.

He also would suggest providing more support for Pakistan, better U.S. communication and propaganda skills to match those of al-Qaeda, and more pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to clean up government corruption -- all options being discussed in White House deliberations.

"We want to have some kind of governance there, and we have some obligation for it not to be a bloodbath," Hoh said. "But you have to draw the line somewhere, and say this is their problem to solve."

[red-roses]

I just hope that young people are smart enough to realize that joining the military isn?t the only way they would get a free education and that there are other ways?.finis..

[OKSoldiersmom2]

If you take a look at the numbers of American Men and Women who have lost their lives since the beginning of this war, the numbers have greatly increase just from last year at this time. 4 Marines killed not to long ago, didn't have enough support, 8 Soldiers killed in combat in one troop at an outpost, which my son is part of, also lacked support, I believe, 11 Troops killed in Helicopter crashes yesterday, and then 8 more killed today! This is to mention just a few. How many more are going to have to die before Mr. Obama does something. I wonder if it was his daughter, wife or mother over there would it be different? Just how many in Congress have children fighting over seas in Iraq or Deadly Afghanistan?

[jefleshman]

Are we making a positive difference in Afghanistan?

You see for yourself and make your own opinion, Matt Hoh has given his:

Pre and Post Taliban Point of View:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/a-woman-among-warlords/womens-rights-in-the-taliban-and-post-taliban-eras/66/#

NATO/ISAF Assessment for 2009:

http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2009_03/20090331_090331_afghanistan_report_2009.pdf



In case you were wondering how it was like in Afghanistan under the Taliban:

Some of the brutal Taliban Laws:

http://www.rawa.org/rules.htm



In their own words under the Taliban:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/taliban/life-under-the-taliban?page=0,0

"We know more about life now," said Massoud Ahmadi, 32, a civil servant in Herat. "We do not want to experience that radical regime again."

"We were dead under the Taliban," said a radio manager from Helmand. "All we thought of was our next meal. When the new government came, people had hope, they began to live again."

"I still remember those seven years, when I was locked up at home," said Shukria, who is now a literature student at Herat University. "I fell so far behind in terms of development. I was in prison - I could not even go to the market without a mahram."

A mahram was a male, usually a family member, who accompanied women when they had to go out.

"It was like being in prison," said Abdul Qadir, 28, a shopkeeper. "We lost the feeling of being young."

[ramos1129]

But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, 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. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

--------------------------------------------

President Obama must interview this young man alone and today if possible. Certainly before he makes any decisions on Afgan.

[jefleshman]

Yes Pres. Obama should listen to a US Contractor who has an engineer diploma assigned to a PRT in Afghanistan for a total of 4 months (in one Province)...he has read books and knows Afghanistan so well!

Are you kidding me?

[USMC-Mom]

He's one (former)Marine out of how many? He's an expert why?
I do think it would be nice for Obama to speak to all the men & women in service, but I mean the one's on the front line. The ones who are fighting & out with the people.

[USMC-Mom]

I don't want Obama over there saying much of anything. I want Obama to listen to them. They are the ones who are there & fighting. We who sit at our comuters & tv's don't know a thing compared them men & women on the front line.

[USMC-Mom]

In my area when you speak to people it goes both ways. You know, you speak to me & I speak back. So hell no I do not want a president to go and just speak one of his speeches that someone else wrote. I want the man to sit down & talk to the men & women who really know what is going on. Those folks who are in the towns with the people, doing the fighting.

[excop1949]

Captain Hoh:

Thank you for your service, and your honesty.

[pigsinlipstick]

THE SAD PART OF ALL THIS IS THAT MORE OFFICERS AND MEN DID NOT

STEP UP TO THE PLATE


WHEN THE GREAT WAR CRIMINALS BUSH/CHENEY STARTED THIS

NATIONAL NIGHTMARE,


AND IT IS A NATIONAL NIGHTMARE FOR BOTH COUNTRIES INVOLVED

[jefleshman]

What is sad is you buy this garbage.

Do you believe 100% that this "letter" and Story are accurately portrayed without spinning it one way or the other?

Keep in mind, I believe ALL (including FOX News which seems to be getting a lot of attention) does not represent the honest values of good reporting...they are all out to make a BUCK no matter who they screw over to include the public, they do not care about your view...they will print a story that will generate hits and garner sponsorship and readers to make more money....

Sounds like you all want to talk about businesses that are making money in war but fail to acknowledge the media which is a business that is profiting just as much, if not more.

Not to mention the damage they cause misleading the public on many issues, you cannot put a DOLLAR sign on it!

Totally disgraceful, in my opinion.

CBS should call BS on this story and remove it. Show us someone is TRYING to make a difference.

[jefleshman]

Hey Fink,

this is not made up. This is real. From Afghanistan... Please draw your own conclusions on below.

For all those who would like to know a few data points, this is just information from 1 of 2 x Afghan Provinces I work in (This is what the Afghans are saying were I am; the information is 2 weeks old pre-election runoff notification):

1. 87% said life is better than it was two years ago, 7% said life is not better than two years ago, 6% said life has not changed.

2. 84% said the government is responsible for improving their life and 7% said the elders are.

3. 87% said the government is working to better their future.

4. Improvements seen in the past two years in their village were: Security 32%, Education 31% and Health 24%.

a. 90% of those surveyed were males
b. Age range was 12-66
c. Average age was 29.7 years old

Occupations: 22% Farmers, 14% Students, housewives or unemployed.

Unemployment rate is probably higher as many reported nothing for occupation.

Again, this is why I have a different opinion of what Mr. Hoh is saying. Because I have been in the villages and in the small community centers, I have seen more then you so called experts on war. I have been in 7 different provinces throughout Afghanistan on 2 seperate occasions. I know what we are doing is making a difference. I have seen it in 2006-2007 and now 2008 to 2009. Yes, folks, I do not have to rely on the news to tell me the truth, I know they wont. I see it and live it here in RC East Afghanistan.

Fink anymore smart comments?

[jefleshman]

Ooooops forgot to mention the percentage of unemployed was 36%...but I believe it to be much higher.

Also, I forgot to mention the area I am in is were some of the 21000 additional forces were added (this year) to areas that have not had a NATO/ISAF or Afghan Security Forces, where the Taliban roamed free brutalize the citizens of Afghanistan....

And you want to say more troops are not needed because they cannot help and are efforts are hopeless? Please tell that to the Afghans, becuase they do not believe the Media Garbage like you do.

Keep listening to the media, what a good honest source that they are to inform you of the truth.

[jefleshman]

by finkfust October 27, 2009 4:44 PM EDT
.... and now you are LYING about your personal experience, because you previously admitted to me that you have NEVER been in an Afghan home.

---------------------------------------

Earth to Fink,

Ummmmm people come out of their homes in every part of the world...I do not have to go into someones home to talk to them.

Market Place, Bazaar, School, walking along the road, playing vollyball, tending their fields, during medical out-reaches, during construction projects when curious villagers stop by and so on and so forth....

BTW the SOURCE Fink is ME, it is totally UNCLASSIFIED and has not yet reached the main stream. You are going to SH*T Bricks when....well let me wait...you will get a NEWS SOURCE and ISAF/NATO Assessments backing this and UNHRC reports using the data from the last 11 months soon!

I will be sure to pass it on to you... my "everything is a conspiracy theory" Friend!

You truly are something else!

[vinnyb5]

- from a washpost article...sayt it all.

I am very disturbed by the journalistic standards of this article and strongly encourage Washington Post readers to contact the paper directly.

First, I am currently serving in a PRT in Iraq. I trained with Matt in northern Virginia in April of this past year before we both moved on to our respective assignments. Matt is a smart young man who has honorably served his country, but by no means was or is he an expert on counterinsurgency, Afghan tribal culture, or U.S. strategic policy.

Second-- this article is riddled with inaccuracies to an extent that almost shocks me, and really makes me question its intent and veracity, coming as it does at a critical time in the debate over Afghan policy.

Matt Hoh is NOT a Foreign Service Officer. This basic fact, central to the article and its headline, is wrong, despite the wording in his letter.

Matt is a "3161" State Department employee, a special category of temporary appointments brought on for 12 month assignments in certain areas of expertise-- engineering, ag, business, rule of law, etc. Some may sign on for a second 12-month tour.

This is a very different thing than being an FSO-- a commissioned, career diplomat who is a generalist and is appointed not as a result of an online job application and single interview (sometimes over the phone), but after a series of competitive oral, written, and physical exams.

Referring to Matt as a "U.S. Official" is about as accurate as referring to a postal employee as a U.S. official.

I am not trying to denigrate 3161s or postal employees! But this article gets such basic facts wrong about Matt that I am astounded, and either bespeaks very poor journalism or, worse, an article produced primarily to push a specific political agenda and that knowingly uses false facts to give a certain impression.

There are hundreds, perhaps over 1000, 3161s in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many, many of them are ex-military (having done multiple tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan), and have also faced combat, death, etc., just like Matt bravely did. In my own PRT, we are rocketed frequently, have small arms fire, IEDs, etc., hit our movement teams, you name it.

My point is that as compelling as Matt's story sounds to civilians, it is a fairly typical story here in theater, and by no means gives one any special insight.

There are so many people here with the same experience--or much more experience--that would passionately disagree with Matt's assessment.

Maybe Matt is right; maybe not. But to present his memo and resignation as a significant event of a "U.S. official" with special insight is, with all due respect to Matt, patently absurd. He is a de factor contractor that was on the ground in his PRT about 4 months! On that, one assesses strategic counterinsurgency??

And I absolutely guarantee the only reason Matt warranted an audience with Holbrooke and sudden offers of a Kabul job on the Embassy's front office was that the State Department was well aware of plans to go very public at a critical time-- plans for articles like this splashed over front pages, offers from detractors of Afghan policy to meet and speak, etc. I don't know Matt well and will not impugn his motivations, I believe he is no doubt sincere. But there is nothing special about him that's not special about hundreds of others still in theater, and I cannot believe that he has simply stumbled into the current publicity without discussions with many people about how to use this situation for maximum effect.

I wish Matt luck, and don't doubt that he will do well, with a career jump-started by the current affair. Again, maybe he's right.

But I challenge the Washington Post to explain what I note above-- How and why do you assert Matt is a Foreign Service Officer? Did you not confirm that with him, or did he present himself as such? How did he come to your attention? Why did you not interview other 3161s or FSOs with different views? And, finally, WHY does someone on the ground for a few months warrant such front page coverage?

[jefleshman]

by vinnyb5 October 27, 2009 11:56 AM EDT
- from a washpost article...sayt it all.


Thanks, it is hard for people to understand that there are many thoughts and opinions... and the media is always out to sensationalize things...it fooled Fink and Sham...they bought CBS/WP BS hook line and sinker...

Priceless!

[erichsh]

vinnyb5, you should submit your post to the Washington Post and see if they will publish it (unlikely, admittedly). You sound like you know what you're talking about.

[jefleshman]

Fink and Shaz,

Any comments to Vinny?

[pigsinlipstick]

what a crock the propaganda police are everywhere,

which ''civil affairs unit'' are you assigned to again?


LIAR's

[jefleshman]

by erichsh October 27, 2009 12:10 PM EDT


Agree with you 100%.

They wouldn't want to admit they did not do proper research in posting purposely to sell a "story" to mislead the reading audience.

There is a reason it is called a "story".

[jefleshman]

by JunkJournalism October 27, 2009 12:35 PM EDT


Love the name! Because, once again...the public believes JUNK!

[jefleshman]

Mr. Hoh did what he believes is right from the sound of the article. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you do not believe in what you are doing than by all means do what he did.

His struggle sounds like an internal personal struggle within himself trying to figure things out:
----------------------------------
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan"

"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."

"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had"
-----------------------------------
No one is going to fault Mr. Hoh,

Like I have articulated before on a post. My experiences are just that (my experiences), 10 people can be in the same unit at the same time and place and you will have 10 different personal experiences; some positive and some negative.

I believe in what we are doing here in Afghanistan, but this is my opinion and based on my own experiences with almost 24 months here in 3 different provinces in Afghanistan. I have seen and experienced loss of life as well as "hope" giving back to those who didn't have hope before; so each of us experience things differently.

[ibsteve2u]

What is your job? Are you an 11B out there pounding the hills, or are you behind the wire performing intelligence or logistical functions?

[ibsteve2u]

lollll....or do you work for Black & Veach, or the Louis Berger Group of New Jersey?

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/77681.html

[ibsteve2u]

*Black & Veatch, that is. Hate to misspell the names of those who are finding war in Afghanistan to be so very...profitable.

"Cost-plus" billing of the U.S. Treasury is very profitable, when your primary goal is profit, rather than accomplishing the mission.

[jefleshman]

Steve,

I primarily work reconstruction and development at Brigade Level (very similar to Mr. Hoh who was a PRT Commander).

Why do you ask?

[smoknmirrors]

I have to admire a man who follows George W. Bush's advice "stick to your principles" to stick it to George W. Bush. Unfortunately, the essence of this marine's thesis of valley-ism is that "..a group in this valley here has no connection with an insurgent group two kilometers away." It makes for some difficulty explaining how such a valley-corralled group made toast of the Twin Towers thousands of miles away. I never wanted our people to go to Afghanistan in the first place, preferring bunker busters and predators and missiles to level the hills and waste the valleys. It was their choice to provide the sanctuary for training and supporting those who brought this war to our shores. As far as I am concerned they can neither run nor hide. Turn Afghanistan into a parking lot for Pakistan or learn to convert poppies to fuel for internal combustion engines. But this marine is correct, imo, about continuing to poke a hornet's nest as long as those sticks are human lives and all we get out of it is another verse for Halls of Montezuma.

[ibsteve2u]

lolll...well,it went right over your head.

The people in valley "a", who are separate and distinct - and isolated - from all other valleys provided living space for al Qaida...

And you want to kill the people in valley "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q"....until you run out of valleys and people to kill.

Very neoconish...very chickenhawkish...very rightie...very Republican.

Just kill, and kill, and kill, and kill....from your safely undisclosed location.

[Virgil-1]

I thought the democrats were going to end all these wars.I know,just
campaign lies.

[ibsteve2u]

Wars aren't water spigots, that you just turn off.

Once unleashed, they're floods, as if the Mississippi had overflowed its banks and breached its ***** from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

Wars leave a bounty of consequences, all of which must be cleaned up, and all of which takes time.

Bush, Cheney, & PNAC, LLP were the dam-busters of war, and they cleaned up NOTHING.

[stn_sage]

To ibsteve2u: I agree with a lot of your comments both past and present, but this guy's got a point! He really does!

Wars may not be water spigots...but they CAN be turned off...and quickly, too...if the powers-that-be want to...that is!

Obama as CIC, could give the order and end it...any time!

And consequences from major wars are NEVER completely cleaned up! The reason being...it DOES take that time you mention...so it's only cleaned up to a point...and considered done!

This country has spent BILLIONS of dollars rebuilding Iraq and lesser amounts in 'Stan, but at some point we need to 'call it'!

[Lawyers-Guns-n-Money-01]

by finkfust October 27, 2009 10:04 AM EDT
"Sorry, let me be more succinct.
Um."

Well, at least that's funny. So you are an idiot with a sense of humour, which makes you 50% unusual in America!
=================================================================

At least I have a sense of humor. You're just a plain idiot.

[Lawyers-Guns-n-Money-01]

by finkfust October 27, 2009 11:42 AM EDT
Lawyers-Guns-n-Money-01 - You didn't ask which 50%!!!!!
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I'm just trying to figure out if your idiocy is based in sanctimony or self loathing.

(We already know which 50% camp you've pitched your tent in.)

[ibsteve2u]

Hoh: "...why and to what end"?

"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed." [Hoh] said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Hoh: "I thought it was more nationalistic. But it's localism. I would call it valley-ism."

Thanks, Bush, Cheney, & PNAC, LLP.

ALL that you had to do was capture or kill bin Ladin - an OUTSIDER, to the Aghanis, and GET OUT.

But what you did was follow PNAC's nose for oil and religion to Iraq, and shafted America, Afghanistan, Iraq, and another dozen or so coalition countries.

Yes, indeed...congratulations are due to Bush, Cheney, & PNAC, LLP.

There has never been so few individuals who have succeeded in betraying so many nations - so many people - in all of prior human history.

[Bonniejk]

I realize it is hard for anyone who has a chils husband or fatjher in harms way to really be to objective about this but I do not think anyone should say this equals Christ dieing on the cross. We started this as mortels and it will be ended by mortels WHEN is the question. To think we can't get out because of our pride, well, that is just not what we send men to war for. WE NEED TO LOOK AT MOVING ON FOR MANY REASONS AND NOT SPEND OUR SOLDIERS BLOOD ON A LOST CAUSE.

[michigander62]

Thank Heavens for a Marine. It is about time somebody who has been there in command had the guts to say the truth. He probably had this character because he didn't make general. I have found by then they lack character. Mr. Hoh hats off to you. As I read part of your letter you didn't say the war was winless just not being fought as it should be fought. And with big ears "dithering" about sending more troops good M/W in uniform will be killed. Are the military leaders advising big ears combat experienced? Oh yes in the paper clip and supply war. Folks great M/W are bleeding and dieing get in or get out of the war. I have never seen a politician who bled for his country.

[incog-nito]

Again you misquote his words for political points. He didn't say the war was winless, but he said that it's pointless. There is nothing to win. So all you chickenhawks can complain about "dithering" and not "winning", but in the end any victory will be hollow.

[isidorordl]

A strong and honest man. Citizens must compel the government to review the Beltway policy of sending to war our reserve forces-taken form the least connected or economically protected. As a Nam Vet, I opposed the doing away of the draft because I predicted that it would lead to greater abuse of power and non-accountability.

[canislupus16]

I comment from a far less credible and noble position than isidorordl. I didn't go to Viet Nam, nor was I even in the service, although I was the "right" age at the time, having graduated HS in '67.

My draft number was 212, one of those numbers you never forget, like a social security number. For two years, I had the 2S designation of a college deferment. Dick Cheney, when asked why he didn't serve in the military and kept getting deferments, says he had more important things to do. It makes me sick to be equated in any way with him and that sense of entitlement, although that was never my intention nor has it ever been my attitude.

Like a lot of people at the time, I struggled with what "that war" meant. Worth it or not? Long short of forty years later of course, history provided a clear answer.

At the time, I ultimately gave up my deferment prior to completing college, was reclassified 1A making me eligible to be drafted and in a matter of a few weeks, I was called to report for a physical; I passed with flying colors. I debated enlisting, having by that time lost friends and a cousin to that war. I married young and in the end I didn't enlist, nor was I drafted, inasmuch as the military saw fit, or not, to draft those ?only? up to about number 205 that particular year.

Yet my views today fully support military consignment. Easy for me to say, some will justifiably opine, because I was not drafted, didn?t enlist, and didn?t serve, in war or in peace.

I support reinstating the draft for, among other things, the very reason isidorordl does. Absent the consternation of voters, the powerful will always abuse power, and there will be no accountability. The draft gives pause to presidents and members of congress alike before willy-nilly committing the blood of their children, their relatives? children, and their friends? children. If you miss the translation, it is the drafting of middle and upper class teens and young adults to be put in harm?s way.

Some wars are worth fighting, but since World War II, in my view, none has been. The question presidents and congress seem to fail so miserably at is, what is worth fighting for?

I?ll throw out a sort of crude analogy. In the famous, or infamous case, involving pornography, Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart stated (perhaps infamous for no other reason than his quote), ?I may not be able to define pornography, but I know it when I see it.? Similarly, with the draft in place, I have no doubt that a war worth fighting will have no problem being declared as such and America will go to battle in whatever form necessary. Wars not worth fighting will fail that litmus test, and will be avoided.

[pickaguitar1]

Hoh did the right thing

[superdem1]

I just hope President Obama does what is in AMERICA's interest, and doesn't listen to the military, which only wants to fight, or his right wing enemies, who are already crying about the "loss of Afghanistan" on "his watch." Were we better off after we left Viet Nam - without a doubt. Were the Russians better off after they left Afghanistan - absolutely. Doubling down in Afghanistan is a huge mistake, we need to get the heck out of there. It's none of our business who runs that place. Everyone knows the Taliban are horrible, they showed that to the world already. We are making them into nation heroes, instead of letting their own people finally get sick of them. The Afghans need to pull themselves out of the mud. there's a reason this tribal society still hasn't developed beyond the stone age. They don't want to.

[pickaguitar1]

He did the honorable thing. Right thing to do

[babooph]

Obama must be quite the optimist to take over damage control after the sword through the heart of the USA that the Bush bunch left -mission impossible.

[jwesel1]

"if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure,"
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He is helping reduce the cost by resigning and not getting paid. If the rest of the military could be one tenth as conscient as this guy, US wouldn't be in this mess.

[pigsinlipstick]

RIGHT ON BRO!