| | |  Americas & Beyond | October 2009 
US Official Resigns Over Afghan War
 Karen DeYoun - Washington Post
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October 27, 2009
| | Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain Matthew Hoh resigned last month in protest over the Afghan war. (U.S. Army) | |
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting.
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.
"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."
Click here to read more about Captain Hoh's resignation.
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