too many Daves

Wednesday, during a Washington Post online chat that I didn’t see until almost a full day after I wrote a post about Matthew Hoh and his resignation over Afghanistan strategy, a reader from D.C. asked Hoh about the same basic idea I highlighted. The exchange went like this:

Washington, D.C.: Shouldn’t you have known before going to Afghanistan that the war was pretty intractable? I mean, the history of the country is clear. What new information did you learn that so completely changed your mind about U.S. involvement there?

Matthew Hoh: I did study quite a bit and I spoke to many friends and colleagues who had previously served in Afghanistan. I did have concerns about the endstate of our goals in Afghanistan, but also felt the need to contribute and to continue to serve. Upon arriving in Afghanistan and serving in both the East and the South (and particularly speaking with local Afghans), I found that the majority of those who were fighting us and the Afghan central government were fighting us because they felt occupied. This concurred with history I had read and with what colleagues had told me.

Now, I may be reading Hoh’s words through a filter. But there’s nothing in his response to the Post reader that makes me rethink what I asserted in yesterday’s piece: “The basic grim truths that Hoh wrote about in his much-quoted resignation letter were all basically true when he took his job a few months ago.”

Meanwhile, I cross-posted my piece to Huffington Post. A few readers left comments there — good ones. You can see those by clicking here and scrolling down to the reader comments.