49 / More on the Afghan war
Here's a case that rather much reflects my opinion - though I probably wouldn't use quite the same language (''I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys'' ? Hmmm.) But the point I made in my Pacifist Manifesto is, don't fight a whole country - with all its civilians - but fight and eliminate the terrorists.
Beyond that, what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan?
See also: 2009 July 20 The Afghan War is Unwinnable
The war hero who spoke out
The Washington Post, reprinted in the SMH today, by Karen DeYoung
When Matthew Hoh joined the US Foreign Service this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the Obama Administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan. A former marine captain with combat experience in Iraq, Mr Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department.
But last month Mr Hoh, 36, became the first US official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fuelled the insurgency. ''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.
The reaction to Mr Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior US officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay. The US ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Mr Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard Holbrooke, the Administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
''We took his letter very seriously because he was a good officer,'' Mr Holbrooke said. He asked Mr Hoh to join his team.
He initially accepted but changed his mind a week later.
''I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love,'' Mr Hoh said. ''There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed,'' he said of militants. ''I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys.'' But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the US largely because its troops are there and because the corrupt, US-backed government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, the US is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.