Resignation reminds me of Ram Bahadur Bomjon. He is constantly restraining himself from his lower appetites and renouncing worldly endeavors. If its true that he fasts and meditates for 96 consecutive hours on a regular basis then he is almost totally resigned from the world. Anyway, the "terrorists" aren't targeting Amish people. Amish people don't fuck with anyone. They too have pretty much resigned from society.
Ambassador Nancy J. Powell
Director General of the Foreign Service and
Director of Human Resources
U.S. Department of State
2201 C. Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Ambassador Powell:
It is with great regret and disappointment I submit my resignation from my appointment as a Political Officer in the Foreign Service and my post as the Senior Civilian Representative for the U.S. Government in Zabul Province. I have served six of the previous ten years in service to our country overseas, to include deployment as a U.S. Marine officer and Department of Defense civilian in the Euphrates and Tigris River Valleys of Iraq in 2004-2005 and 2006-2007. I did not enter into this position lightly or with any undue expectations nor did I believe my assignment would be without sacrifice, hardship or difficulty. However, in the course of my five months of service in Afghanistan, in both Regional Commands East and South, I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan. 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. To put simply: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war.
This fall will mark the eighth year of U.S. combat, governance and development operations within Afghanistan. Next fall, the United States’ occupation will equal in length the Soviet Union’s own physical involvement in Afghanistan. Like the Soviets, we continue to secure and bolster a failing state, while encouraging an ideology and system of government unknown and unwanted by its people.
If the history of Afghanistan is one great stage play, the United States is no more than a supporting actor, among several previously, in a tragedy that not only pits tribes, valleys, clans, villages and families against one another, but, from at least the end of King Zahir Shah’s reign, 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 Pashtun insurgency, which is composed of multiple, seemingly infinite, local groups, is fed by what is perceived by the Pashtun people as a continued and sustained assault, going back centuries, on Pashtun land, culture, traditions and religion by internal and external enemies. The U.S. and NATO presence and operations in Pashtun valleys and villages, as well as Afghan army and police unites that are led and composed of non-Pashtun soldiers and police, provide an occupation force against which the insurgency is justified. In both RC East and South, I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unrepresentative government in Kabul.
The United States military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency. In a like manner our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people. The Afghan government’s failings particularly when weighed against the sacrifice of American lives and dollars, appear legion and metastatic:
* Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
* President whose confidants and chief advisers comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;
* A system of prvincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and strongmen allied to the United States solely for, and limited by, the value of our USAID and CERP contracts and whose own political and economic interests stand nothing to gain from any positive or genuine attempts at reconciliation; and
* The recent election process dominated by fraud and discredited by low voter turnout, which has created an enormous victory for our enemy who now claims a popular boycott and will call into question worldwide our government’s military, economic and diplomatic support for an invalid and illegitimate Afghan government.
Our support for this kind of government, coupled with a misunderstanding of the insurgency’s true nature, reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam; an unpopular and corrupt government we backed at the expense of our Nation’s own internal peace, against an insurgency whose nationalism we arrogantly and ignorantly mistook as a rival to our own Cold War ideology.
I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries. Finally, if our concern is for a failed state crippled by corruption and poverty and under assault from criminal and drug lords, then if we bear our military and financial contributions to Afghanistan, we must reevaluate and increase our commitment to and involvement in Mexico.
Eight years into war, no nation has ever known as more dedicated, well trained, experienced and disciplined military as the U.S. Armed Forces. I do not believe any military force has ever been tasked with such a complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission as the U.S. Military has received in Afghanistan. The tactical proficiency and performance of our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines is unmatched and unquestioned. However, this is not the European or Pacific theaters of World War II, but rather is a war for which our leaders, uniformed civilian and elected, have inadequately prepared and resourced our men and women. Our forces, devoted and faithful, have been committed to conflict in an indefinite and unplanned manner that has become a cavalier, politically expedient and Pollyannaish misadventure. Similarly, the United State has a dedicated and talented cadre of civilians, both U.S. government employees and contractors, who believe in and sacrifice for their mission, but have been ineffectually trained and led with guidance and intent shaped more by the political climate in Washington, D.C. than in Afghan cities, villages, mountains and valleys.
“We are spending oursleves into oblivion” a very talented and intelligent commander, one of America’s best, briefs every visitor, staff delegation and senior officer. We are mortgaging our Nation’s economy on a war, which, even with increased commitment, will remain a draw for years to come. Success and victory, whatever they may be, will be realized not in years, after billions more spent, but in decades and generations. The United States does not enjoy a national treasury for such success and victory.
I realize the emotion and tone of my letter and ask you excuse any ill temper. I trust you understand the nature of this war and the sacrifices made by so many thousands of families who have been separated from loved ones deployed in defense of our Nation and whose homes bear the fractures, upheavals and scars of multiple and compounded deployments. Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds, some that will never heal or will only worsen with time. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured their dead haves sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can anymore be made. As such, I submit my resignation.
Sincerely,
MATTHEW P. HOH
Senior Civilian Representative
Zabul Province, Afghanistan
Dalton Fury dropping knowledge
From some dude's blog:
Anyone who's read the book “Charlie Wilson's War” by George Crile or watched the movie by the same name, would know by now, that we – the CIA – turned primitive but fierce Afghan tribesmen into techno-holy warriors, armed to their teeth, to fight the Soviets during their 10-year occupation of Afghanistan. In the end the Russians left, the Soviet Union crumbled, the Berlin wall fell – Afghanistan was “the straw that broke the camel's back”, it helped brake the USSR economically. The US soon turned its back on Afghanistan and funding to help rebuild Afghanistan was cut off under Clinton – despite Charlie Wilson's best efforts – in 1993.
Under the umbrella of the CIA's program to assist the Afghan mujahideen, various loosely-aligned Afghan opposition groups, in their fight against the Soviet occupiers (and the then communist Afghan government), Afghanistan became a gathering place for Islamist volunteer jihadists from all over the world. Afghan commanders on the CIA's payroll included Pakistan's former intelligence chief Hamid Gul and Jalaluddin Haqani, the host to Rep. Charlie Wilson on several of his visits to Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was one of those volunteer-jihadists and a major financier of the mujahideen groups. He was frequently found in the same area as Haqani.
Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005,
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.
After the tragedy of 9/11/2001, many of the CIA's former allies, who had received bags of US taxpayer money each month became top targets of the US forces in Afghanistan. When we turned our backs on Afghanistan and cut off funding, the Taliban, one of the many mujahideen fractions – this one backed by Pakistan – rushed in and rapidly filled the vacuum.
It is worth noting, that the Afghan mujahideen did attribute their victory over the Soviet military to Allah,not the support, weaponry and billions of US taxpayer dollars (think education, healthcare, infrastructure here at home etc.) provided by the CIA. In fact many began to see the US – lone super power by now – as a threat. From the book “Charlie Wilson's War”: “As early as the Gulf War, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, long the main recipient of CIA weaponry, articulated his belief that the United States was seeking world domination and control of Muslim oil”.
Why is the land of Afghanistan somehow critical?
The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAPI) is a proposed natural gas pipeline being developed by the Asian Development Bank. The pipeline was designed to transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan's Southern region around Kandahar into Pakistan and then to India.
The original project started in March 1995 when an inaugural memorandum of understanding between the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan for a pipeline project was signed. In August 1996, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) consortium for construction of a pipeline, led by U.S. oil company, Unocal was formed. On October 27, 1997, CentGas was incorporated in formal signing ceremonies in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan by several international oil companies along with the Government of Turkmenistan. In January 1998, the Taliban-led government of Afghanistan signed an agreement that allowed the proposed project to proceed. In June 1998, Russian Gazprom relinquished its 10% stake in the project. Unocal withdrew from the consortium on December 8, 1998. The pipeline negotiations with the Taliban run Afghan government broke down definitively in August of 2001. The Toronto's Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin wrote at the time, “Washington was furious, leading to speculation it might take out the Taliban. After 9/11, the Taliban, with good reason, were removed — and pipeline planning continued with the Karzai government. U.S. forces installed bases near Kandahar, where the pipeline was to run. A key motivation for the pipeline was to block a competing bid involving Iran, a charter member of the ‘axis of evil.'”
With the Taliban out of the picture, a new deal, a Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement to build a U.S.-backed $7.6 billion pipeline was signed on December 27, 2002 by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan (now US-backed Karzai government) and Pakistan. In 2005, the Asian Development Bank submitted the final version of a feasibility study.
However, since 2003 and the beginning of the Iraq war, the Taliban was slowly able to regroup and re-surge and are now in control of most of Southern Afghanistan. Construction of the Turkmen part was supposed to start in 2006, but the overall feasibility is questionable since the southern part of the Afghan pipeline section runs through territory around Kandahar, which continues to be under de facto Taliban control. The project has essentially stalled. It is once again time to clear out the Taliban so the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project can come to fruition. That is what our brave men and women are fighting for. After all, most if not all wars are fought for economic reasons if you bother to look close enough.
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