A senior U.S. official in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh, became the first known U.S. official to resign in protest to the Afghanistan War. While this resignation probably will not be heard around the world, it is still a step in the right direction. Hoh, a former Marine Corp. captain with experience in Iraq, began working in Afghanistan earlier this year. However, after only five months in Afghanistan he describes the conflict as:
“..reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace.”
This is a major resignation, and definitively a blow to Obama administration’s plan in Afghanistan. Hoh is not, as he himself put it so eloquently:
‘..I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love.. There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed, I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys.’
Nevertheless, Hoh submitted his letter of resignation, and refused other posts in Afghanistan. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone when I say that I am strongly against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe United States should withdraw fully and hastily from both countries and, rather than get mired in a civil war, let the people of each determine what is best for themselves. I realize that that their lives will still be bloody, power might be seized by cruel and ruthless men. But, as Matthew Hoh put it:
If Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages, and families against one another, but, from at least one end of King Zahir Shah’s reign, has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate, and traditional.
In the end we have to do the right thing. I hope Obama realizes that increased troop involvement is not the right thing; instead it only brings back memories of Vietnam. At this point, we are not just fighting the Taliban and Al-Queda, but the people we initially came in to ‘rescue from tyranny and oppression’. As Hoh stated in his letter:
“I have observed that the bulk of insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.”
Does that sound familiar? It should, because those are the reasons thirteen colonies went to war two hundred and thirty years ago. How far we’ve come.. For those wishing to read the letter, here’s the link. It is very well written and presents very good and clear ideas. Matthew Hoh sacrificed a career with this resignation, but hopefully it will not go to waste. Perhaps the public, and others in positions like Hoh, will see that to stop these wars we have to do more to pressure our leaders. Hopefully, his resignation will not go to waste, but rather save both American and Afghani lives. I’ll finish this post of with two more excerpt from the letter:
“This fall will mark the eighth year of U.S. combat, governance, and development operations within Afghanistan. Next fall, the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan. Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.”
And finally:
‘If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Queda resurgence and regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weaken Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. ‘
Lets stop this war now!
