SoonerBlue

Right in the middle of President Obama's deliberations on what to do about US presence in Afghanistan, Foreign Service officer and former Marine Matthew Hoh became the first US official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war...he says he has doubts about our current strategy and planned future strategy.

Matthew Hoh said about our Afghanistan policy:

"I believe that the people we are fighting there are fighting us because we are occupying them. Not for any ideological reasons, not because of any links to al-Qaeda, not because of any fundamental hatred toward the West, the only reason they're fighting us is because we are occupying them."

Indeed.

This soldier Hoh was in the fight...he knows what he's talking about. There has to be a better way for this terror situation to be worked on.

~~U.S. official resigns over Afghan war ~~

"Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting"

From washingtonpost.com: "When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service ... 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." [..]"~~~

Matthew Hoh is a hero to the men and women on the battle field. It took guts for him to write this letter and speak truth to power. A majority of Americans agree with his statements...which ring loud and clear.

I truly hope his message will give courage and a wake up for others to follow.

The fight against terrorism is not central to Afghanistan. The cost in precious life and the cost in national treasure is not justifiable. This is the longest war the US has ever fought...and we are no closer to an end than we were almost 9 years ago. Afghan corruption and fraud are rampant. The NYT is reporting that Karzai's brother is a drug kingpin on the CIA payroll.

Everyone from Alexander the Great to the Mongols to the British has invaded Afghanistan. We are just the latest in a long line of foreign invaders with an agenda.

After Russia invaded in 1979, we used Afghanistan to fight the Cold War. Then, after the USSR withdrew in 1989, we lost interest in doing anything to help the Afghan people... which left a vacuum that the Taliban was happy to fill. Bin Laden was the result of our backing the mujahideen...and not until 9/11 did we start paying real attention to the region again.

Yes, I know there is fear about the Taliban having power in nuclear armed Pakistan.

But, if it's really only the nuclear arms that we are worried about, maybe we should just say that our strategy is not allowing nuclear arms to fall into the hands of terrorists or supporters of terrorists. There would probably be a lot of support for that policy from the rest of the world. Instead of this silly unworkable nation building.

But we have no stated objective in Afghanistan or Pakistan. And even scarier, our military presence there is strengthening all the terrorist groups, making the threat to nuclear armed Pakistan greater.

This has been the deadliest month ever for our forces in Afghanistan, nearly a year after millions of us voted for a President we thought was going to bring our troops home.

Time to hit the streets again, kids? Obama might not get out of Vietnam 'til we force him to...