CNN Interviews Matthew Hoh Who Resigned In Protest Over Afghanistan

[democracy1st]

Run time: 10:48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5EKSBBnzpE   Posted on YouTube: November 01, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: November 02, 2009 By DU Member: democracy1st Views on DU: 1458

 
CNN's Fareed Zakaria Interviews State Department Official Matthew Hoh Who Resigned In Protest Over Afghanistan War - 11/01/09


U.S. official resigns over Afghan war
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting

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."

The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "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."

While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?"

Hoh accepted the argument and the job, but changed his mind a week later. "I recognize the career implications, but it wasn't the right thing to do," he said in an interview Friday, two days after his resignation became final.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html

[ClayZ]

1. K and R

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. he knows it and surely our govt knows it and wages war anyway

why, because of kickbacks or other control by military industrial complex?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. PS I saw him on some other show, and recommend everyone listen to him

or look for his resignation letter on the internet.

[pauldp]

4. Hoh makes it clear the notion we are there to get Al Qaeda is bullshit.

So are the military brass just stupid? What Ho won't say is that we are there to keep consuming weapons and human flesh, and most likely to let the CIA keep moving heroin.

[shadowknows69]

5. Spot fucking on. Bravo to this brave man for standing on principle.

I love that they offered him a promotion to basically bribe him to shit up. I hope he gets lots of press time and I hope he stays safe.

[evenso]

6. I'm glad he has the courage and intelligence to speak out

and make the case that needs to be made to our policy makers. I see a book deal, and maybe a run for Congress....

[Postman]

7. What if the US military presence in the area is to deter China and Russia?

What if that is the end game here? What if occupying Afghanistan and the Caucasus region is for future deterrence?

I'll answer my own question. What is there to deter and for what?

Is it to grab natural resources? Perhaps.

It can't possibly be to protect future labor markets, American corporations already do business with China - one of the most repressive regimes in the world when it comes to labor practices.

So if it isn't about natural resources and it isn't about the exploitation of labor, is it simply the aggrandizement of taxpayer dollars being siphoned away from useful purposes at home and into the pockets of the military-industrial-congressional-complex?

With a middle-class crumbling due to a Finance Economy replacing the Manufacturing Economy (that created the middle-class) and the economic divide in America growing ever wider, with a Democratic Party on the take from corporate America (forget about the Republican Party), at a time when another FDR was needed we got another Bill Clinton......what is it about the United States that needs defending? What is there to protect? We need the military to protect our shit jobs, lousy pay, lack of benefits and our opportunity to go into massive debt to survive? The Consitution? The Bill Of Rights? Right. They're just pieces of paper used to wipe the asses of the powers that be - see Patriot Act- see Telecom immmunity Act - see illegal war in Iraq/Afghanistan etc., etc., et. al....

The country is a hollowed out shell of what it once was and our gov't is too busy giving away our future to Corporate America..

[peacetalksforall]

8. Thank you, Matthew. Head and heart. It appears we are now the arrogant ones. Our

CIA and miiitary brass are running the world?

[Postman]

9. Hoh must have read Parenti......He mentions the Soviet intervention was in opposition of the crazies

Michael Parenti: Afghanistan, Another Untold Story

http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/michael-parenti-afghanistan-another-untold-story/

[earcandle]

10. Obama? Are you listening? Looks like the cat is out of the bag on Afghan. Are you staying in the

war to waste our dollars on genocide? Of both our poor and
their poor to grab resources? 

Please stop.  There are other ways to prosper. Have a heart. 
Have some courage. Get real. 

[AlbertCat]

11. Are you staying in the war to waste our dollars on genocide?

Well, don't forget the gas pipeline.


Has everybody forgotten the pipeline????

[liberation]

12. Have you looked @ Afghanistan in a world map recently?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense to run a pipeline through one of the most mountainous places on earth and in the opposite direction.

Common sense people, please...

[AlbertCat]

13. Have you looked @ Afghanistan in a world map recently?

Ooooo.... here's a map!


http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Pipeline.htm

[earcandle]

15. Well! There is a picture of OIL that says more than 1000 words!

Thanks for the link. 

[rollingrock]

14. He got out just in time

if Hoh stayed in his position any longer I don't doubt he would have ended up like Pat Tillman.