U.S. official resigns over Afghan war

And the breakdown begins. This is why morale is so important. When morale goes to hell, the talented people who can make a difference, who are able to walk off, leaving those who can't walk away to flounder in the muck of a ****ed up situation.

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.

washingtonpost.com

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I'm always torn on this type of issue.

On one hand I understand and feel for the person resigning or (in other cases) going awol over certain issues such as this.

I, also, cannot help but feel that such actions help to break down morale and encourages more less-than-satisfactory feelings.

Also, many in the service aren't fortunate enough ot be able to step out when they disaprove or feel they're trapped - and, in that sense, this is unfair to them.

Disatisfaction from troops in such a situation is, also, expected or not unusual within our current circumstances (change of who's in charge, basicly) We went from this being a republican-run operation to a democrat-run operation and that really disturbs the waters of an already convoluted ordeal.

So, I guess I understand and in a way respect it but I wouldn't encourage my husband to do it.

So does anybody agree with Matthew Hoh that "While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," "?

Well - I think that they need to redefine what the "fight" is.

That's part of the big problem - there doesn't seem to be focus because there isn't a doctrine of some nature on the issue what our purpose and intent is.

Surely Obama isn't intent on continuing what he considered "more of the same" ... yet, at the moment, that's exactly what he's doing ... so if he wants to be able to continue what Bush started he needs to step up and stop luvin his muffin.

What if the Afghan government remains questionably corrupt and unresponsive to efforts to reform?

No amount of military might would be sufficient to win the support of the people outside of the large cities.

The decision to add troops to an unstable and/or untenable political situation would spell disaster.

That's why Obama will wait til after the run off election 11/7/09 to decide.

If the people believe the election is bogus we will be throwing good lives away.

This article is enlightening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/weekinreview/25filkins.html?hpw

bhkad said:

What if the Afghan government remains questionably corrupt and unresponsive to efforts to reform?

No amount of military might would be sufficient to win the support of the people outside of the large cities.

The decision to add troops to an unstable and/or untenable political situation would spell disaster.

That's why Obama will wait til after the run off election 11/7/09 to decide.

If the people believe the election is bogus we will be throwing good lives away.

This article is enlightening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/weekinreview/25filkins.html?hpw

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I hate to agree with you, but I do.

Sometimes elections aren't the answer-- it only legitimizes a corrupt government and people outside of kabul couldn't care less.

bhkad said:

What if the Afghan government remains questionably corrupt and unresponsive to efforts to reform?

No amount of military might would be sufficient to win the support of the people outside of the large cities.

The decision to add troops to an unstable and/or untenable political situation would spell disaster.

That's why Obama will wait til after the run off election 11/7/09 to decide.

If the people believe the election is bogus we will be throwing good lives away.

This article is enlightening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/weekinreview/25filkins.html?hpw

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Great article. I wonder if it's possible to have a legit election.

Middleground said:

Great article. I wonder if it's possible to have a legit election.

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Thanks. I think that's the $64,000 question.

bhkad said:

Thanks. I think that's the $64,000 question.

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I doubt it. I think Karzai shouldn't be allowed to run in a runoff election. The fraud puts him at the lead. Much like fraud in Iran put the current president at the front. I think in the overwhelming Islamic countries it is safe to say that if there is fraud the guy in charge has carried it out. What we are doing is postponing the inevitable(Karzai winning again).

Afghanistan needs a runoff election

And fraud there irrefutably was: When ballot boxes were emptied for counting, some contained books of ballot papers not yet detached, but all made out to a single candidate - incumbent President Hamid Karzai - and filled out in a single hand. About 20 per cent of polling places were "ghost" polls - too isolated and dangerous for voters to get to - but they somehow provided massive support for Karzai anyway. And so on.

Even as the scale of the fraud became evident, Karzai tried to claim victory. Only serious pressure from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and others - including Canada's Stephen Harper - pushed Karzai to admit the obvious. Western-style elections are a new concept in Afghanistan, and Karzai and his supporters have now, we hope, learned a valuable lesson: The democracies propping up his government, despite all its faults, take fair elections seriously.

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It's pretty ridiculous that ANY runoff election would include a guy who clearly cheated.

apdst said:

And the breakdown begins. This is why morale is so important. When morale goes to hell, the talented people who can make a difference, who are able to walk off, leaving those who can't walk away to flounder in the muck of a ****ed up situation.

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You don't know why Hoh quit. It may not be because of morale. Maybe it's because he doesn't believe in the mission anymore, nor the way we are prosecuting it. Read for yourself:

Hoh's Resignation Letter to the State Dept.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," Hoh wrote in his resignation letter, dated Sept. 10 but published early Tuesday. "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."

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Hatuey said:

I doubt it. I think Karzai shouldn't be allowed to run in a runoff election. The fraud puts him at the lead. Much like fraud in Iran put the current president at the front. I think in the overwhelming Islamic countries it is safe to say that if there is fraud the guy in charge has carried it out. What we are doing is postponing the inevitable(Karzai winning again).

Afghanistan needs a runoff election



It's pretty ridiculous that ANY runoff election would include a guy who clearly cheated.

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He might have won legitimately anyway as the incumbent so you can't just disqualify him.

apdst said:

And the breakdown begins. This is why morale is so important. When morale goes to hell, the talented people who can make a difference, who are able to walk off, leaving those who can't walk away to flounder in the muck of a ****ed up situation.

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i posted this in the warfare forum......i was wondering what everyone thought.

his position is that we are fighting a civil war, and we shouldn't even be there. at this point, i tend to agree.

Regardless of your ultimate position for more troops or against our presents for what ever reason some facts need to be taken into consideration. What was the initial goal? Have we achieved that goal? If we leave or as some would say cut and run are we going to leave a bigger mess than the people had before it started? Once you answer theses and other questions for yourself one thing remains in my mind. That being to effect a desired change it is always easier and more effective to work from the inside where you have more and better access to those in a position to make changes. By resigning you may make a big splash and get a little attention for a short time but when that short time is up generally your chances of effecting change are gone and you are forgotten unless you have some special way to maintain the attention level you had for those few fleeting moments.
I believe that in some cases if you can not continue go along with or ignore any longer differences you have with policies it might make a bigger splash if you get fired over those differences rather than quit. it could make you more interesting to some as an underdog and whistle blower rather than just a whistle blower.
I say these things taking neither side just observing from a political, publicity and propaganda standpoint. As to his position I think he's wrong. We went there for the right reasons and any civil war is our responsibility to end because we caused it. The solution I have stated under the topic "Is Afghanistan comparable to Vietnam?"

Aunt Spiker said:

Well - I think that they need to redefine what the "fight" is.

That's part of the big problem - there doesn't seem to be focus because there isn't a doctrine of some nature on the issue what our purpose and intent is.

Surely Obama isn't intent on continuing what he considered "more of the same" ... yet, at the moment, that's exactly what he's doing ... so if he wants to be able to continue what Bush started he needs to step up and stop luvin his muffin.

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continue what? we're propping up a corrupt gov't, the people don't want us there.

Why was it the just war when Bush was in office, and it's not now that Obama is in office?

American said:

Why was it the just war when Bush was in office, and it's not now that Obama is in office?

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The belief that Afghanistan was the "just war" was hyped greatly by Iraq and the debacle there for so many years prior to The Surge and subsequent success. Obama hitched his train to Afghanistan during the campaign and now if he doesn't follow through, it will hurt him politically. No one denies that AFG was the right thing after 9/11, but I think the question has become "what are we doing there and why", as highlighted by the resignation of Hoh, an obviously non-partisan guy.

Many in Obama's camp, to include the VP now believe that a full on COIN strategy is not the right answer in AFG; plus many of the anti-war crowd in his base aren't going to support a troop increase. Although they were oddly silent during the campaign when Obama was touting AFG as "the good war".

liblady said:

continue what? we're propping up a corrupt gov't, the people don't want us there.

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I don't know what he's continuing because he's not doing crap squat at the moment.

Maybe it would be safe to imply: continuing to leave our troops high and dry without intervention or progression.

Maybe he's faithfully continuing the quagmire.

Or perhaps he's continuing with his ideology that "we need to take troops out of Iraq and put them into Afghanistan" ... and, look, here we are, so now he needs to figure out "what comes next" ... only, as Obamanites accused Bush of doing, he's not trying to come up with a timeline and decide exactly that.

He just needs to do something instead of sitting on his indecisive proverbial ass - This is not a war of contrition.

kansaswhig said:

The belief that Afghanistan was the "just war" was hyped greatly by Iraq and the debacle there for so many years prior to The Surge and subsequent success. Obama hitched his train to Afghanistan during the campaign and now if he doesn't follow through, it will hurt him politically. No one denies that AFG was the right thing after 9/11, but I think the question has become "what are we doing there and why", as highlighted by the resignation of Hoh, an obviously non-partisan guy.

Many in Obama's camp, to include the VP now believe that a full on COIN strategy is not the right answer in AFG; plus many of the anti-war crowd in his base aren't going to support a troop increase. Although they were oddly silent during the campaign when Obama was touting AFG as "the good war".

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What happened to the notion that we're there to kill al Qaeda, and that the rest is not our problem. We kicked the Taliban in the ass because they wouldn't give up bin Laden. We started with SOF and it seemed to me at the time that this approach was working.

American said:

Why was it the just war when Bush was in office, and it's not now that Obama is in office?

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It still is a just cause. To liberals though, no war is worth actually winning.


j-mac

Aunt Spiker said:

I don't know what he's continuing because he's not doing crap squat at the moment.

Maybe it would be safe to imply: continuing to leave our troops high and dry without intervention or progression.

Maybe he's faithfully continuing the quagmire.

Or perhaps he's continuing with his ideology that "we need to take troops out of Iraq and put them into Afghanistan" ... and, look, here we are, so now he needs to figure out "what comes next" ... only, as Obamanites accused Bush of doing, he's not trying to come up with a timeline and decide exactly that.

He just needs to do something instead of sitting on his indecisive proverbial ass - This is not a war of contrition.

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It takes more than military success to defeat insurgents. Insurgency grows where a corrupt and weak government does not provide security, justice, and opportunity. Unless these underlying problems are resolved, the military can kill insurgents forever, and more will emerge. Insurgency is a symptom of deeper ills. The rub is that these deeper ills are not military, but political, economic, and social--things that armed forces are not prepared to fix.

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The Civilian Surge Myth | The New Republic

American said:

What happened to the notion that we're there to kill al Qaeda, and that the rest is not our problem. We kicked the Taliban in the ass because they wouldn't give up bin Laden. We started with SOF and it seemed to me at the time that this approach was working.

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Well, many, like the VP, advocate a CT strategy that would primarily be focused on killing AQ. Problem is that AQ is not only in AFG...in fact, I think much of AQ has left (or are dead)...leaving the question "what are we doing there". No one asked during the Bush years because they had Iraq to complain about.

You are right about the initial push...problem is that now we've eradicated and gotten rid of so much of AQ that "mission creep" has set in and we've focused on nation-building and fighting the Taliban (because we need someone to fight). The notion of Taliban still "guarding" AQ is kind of a dead idea and certainly isn't as true as it was in 2001.

bhkad said:

It takes more than military success to defeat insurgents. Insurgency grows where a corrupt and weak government does not provide security, justice, and opportunity. Unless these underlying problems are resolved, the military can kill insurgents forever, and more will emerge. Insurgency is a symptom of deeper ills. The rub is that these deeper ills are not military, but political, economic, and social--things that armed forces are not prepared to fix.

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The Civilian Surge Myth | The New Republic

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We could . . . provide the resources for a serious expeditionary civilian corps. But a few hundred or even a couple of thousand people is not enough. We would need many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of advisers with linguistic skills and cultural knowledge willing to leave home and live under risky conditions for years at a time . . . Of course, if the pay is high enough, the experts will come. But, at a time of massive government budget deficits and a persisting national economic crisis, this is simply not in the cards.

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If we are unwilling to pay the price for a serious civilian capability--and admit that foisting the job of development and political assistance on the military is a bad idea--the only option is to alter our basic strategy. We could find a way to thwart Al Qaeda and other terrorists without trying to re-engineer weak states. We could, in other words, get out of the counterinsurgency and stabilization business

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Yep - he's not doing any of that, either.
He's continuing to do ... nothing.
I could do that - I could be president and I'll take option "C" for continuing to do nothing about it.

American said:

Why was it the just war when Bush was in office, and it's not now that Obama is in office?

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i didn't say it wasn't just, but it's gone beyond the point of usefulness. i don't see any end to it.

kansaswhig said:

The belief that Afghanistan was the "just war" was hyped greatly by Iraq and the debacle there for so many years prior to The Surge and subsequent success. Obama hitched his train to Afghanistan during the campaign and now if he doesn't follow through, it will hurt him politically. No one denies that AFG was the right thing after 9/11, but I think the question has become "what are we doing there and why", as highlighted by the resignation of Hoh, an obviously non-partisan guy.

Many in Obama's camp, to include the VP now believe that a full on COIN strategy is not the right answer in AFG; plus many of the anti-war crowd in his base aren't going to support a troop increase. Although they were oddly silent during the campaign when Obama was touting AFG as "the good war".

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well, it WAS the only war that made a lick of sense. it just doesn't now.

Not to change the subject, but I want to know Obama's motivation in all of this.

Is he trying to show the doubters that he isn't afraid of war?

Is he taking one last shot at capturing bin Laden to prove his superiority over the Bush admin.?

Or is he taking orders from the right, despite his promises to end the wars?

I think it's a pointless endeavor at this stage, and think we need a defined objective and a time line to achieve it.