Afghanistan – opposing war views

First, Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain and a (now former) Foreign Service officer, has quit.

Why?

He says he no longer understands why we are there, but thinks our presence is fueling Afghan insurgency.

Beyond that, he says that we are, in essence, involved in a civil war. He claims dozens of different insurgent groups are in Afghanistan, most of them locally based and focused, on a provincial or district level. And, he cites the corruption of Afghan President Hamid Karzai as driving the local groups, in part:

Hoh's doubts increased with Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election, marked by low turnout and widespread fraud. He concluded, he said in his resignation letter, that the war "has violently and savagely pitted the urban, secular, educated and modern of Afghanistan against the rural, religious, illiterate and traditional. It is this latter group that composes and supports the Pashtun insurgency."

The full story is well worth a read.

Across the pond from the U.S., though, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband supports his government’s sending 500 more troops there, and Roger Cohen hopes this means U.S. President Barack Obama will eventually implement some sort of U.S. increase.