‘I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy’
Matthew Hoh, a Marine Corps war hero turned diplomat, has resigned his post in Afghanistan—sending “ripples all the way to the White House.” Hoh, who was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed, is the first American official to quit in protest over the Afghan war. “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote in a four-page letter to the State 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.” In his letter, Hoh wrote that many Afghans are fighting the U.S. because its troops are there—not because they all support the Taliban. 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.