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 As the Obama administration ponders sending more troops, a high-profile Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain became the first known U.S. official to resign from his post in Afghanistan in protest over the conflict there, even comparing the calamity to Vietnam.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," wrote the former Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. government for Zabul province, Matthew Hoh, in a scathing letter published by the Washington Post Tuesday announcing his intentions to the State Department. "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."
The resignation immediately created upheaval amongst policy bigwigs. According to the Post article entitled "U.S. official resigns over Afghan war," senior officials pleaded with Hoh to remain, worried that they would “lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic.”
"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan “czar,” told the Post, adding that he agreed with much of Hoh’s analysis. "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."
After receiving notice, the U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan invited Hoh to the embassy in Kabul and offered him a job there, which he refused. Afterwards, Hoh was flown back to the U.S. to meet with Holbrooke, who also offered him a job. Hoh originally accepted, but decided against the move just a week later, saying “it wasn’t the right thing to do.”
The 36-year-old combat veteran who fought in Iraq and served as a civilian reconstruction official for the Department of Defense before taking the diplomatic post insists that he is no “peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love.” In fact, he said there were plenty of “dudes who need to be killed." Hoh even admitted that he was never happier than when his Iraq team “whacked a bunch of guys.” But the war is counterproductive, he explained in his September letter.
“The U.S. and NATO presence and operations 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,” Hoh wrote in his resignation, noting that the bulk of insurgents fight not for the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign occupation soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government.
“To put simply: I fail to see the value or worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war,” Hoh charged. He accused the central government in Kabul of “glaring corruption and unabashed graft,” close presidential cooperation with drug lords and war criminals and even a discredited election process “dominated by fraud.”
Hoh said if the stated reason for the war — smashing al Qaeda — was true, then that would also require the U.S. to invade and occupy Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and others, additionally pointing out that recent terror attacks were actually hatched in Europe. He also noted that if the concern was a weak and corrupt government under attack from criminals and drug lords, Mexico would be the place to be.
“I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. military has received in Afghanistan,” Hoh wrote, adding that there were seemingly infinite, disorganized local groups battling the occupation out of loyalty to their families, villages or valleys. “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.”
Now that the letter has been made public, war critics are seizing on the resignation to attack the undeclared conflict. The Christian Science Monitor called Hoh the “new poster boy for critics of [the] Afghanistan war.” NPR said the resignation is likely to become a “rallying point for Afghan war critics.”
Countless commentators also offered praise for Hoh’s decision. “You can now add my name to the list of Americans who have profound respect and admiration for the courage and dedication shown by Matthew Hoh in calling attention to the intractable issues involved in sustaining an armed conflict in Afghanistan,” wrote Mark Skilbred for OpEd News. An analyst for the Huffington Post called Hoh “an American hero,” saying “he told Obama exactly what he needs to hear about Afghanistan: that the Afghan war is a failed, flawed, no-win war.”
The high-profile resignation is already impacting the debate in Washington D.C. about sending more troops to the war-region. Most generals involved in Afghanistan are pushing for a surge. But Americans are become increasingly weary of the effort, and some officials, including the Vice-President, are even saying no. Hoh is set to meet with Joe Biden’s foreign policy advisor in the coming days.
Hoh’s headline-grabbing decision also comes just before a planned run-off election between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top opponent, Abdullah Abdullah. The recent election was widely criticized for massive fraud and failure, casting even more doubt on the credibility of the central government and the whole war effort.
Hoh did acknowledge that the U.S. has some responsibility in preventing the country’s potential descent into a blood bath. But if the Afghan war is to continue, only a miniscule contingent of troops should remain in the country, he said.
Since the war was never declared by Congress — as the U.S. Constitution demands — it should have never started. Furthermore, Afghanistan is not known as “the graveyard of empires” for nothing. Congress should heed Hoh’s advice as somebody with experience in the field and immediately wind down operations and bring the troops home.
Alex Newman is an American freelance writer and the president of Liberty Sentinel Media, Inc., a small media consulting firm. He is currently living in Sweden and has spent most of his life in Latin America, Europe, and Africa. He has a degree in foreign languages and speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian and a little Swedish and Afrikaans. In addition, he earned a degree in journalism from the University of Florida, with emphasis on economics and international relations.
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