Advice to Afghans: Read the handwriting on the American wall before it is too late

Sample Number One:

Matthew Hoh's resignation letter.  Hoh served as the Senior Civilian Representative of the US State Department in Zabul Province, Afghanistan and submitted this letter to his superiors in early September. Here some key excerpts:

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.

On the negative impact Americans are having:

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 sacrifices of American lives and dollars, appear legion and metastatic:

- Glaring corruption and unabashed graft;
- A President whose confidants and chief advisors comprise drug lords and war crimes villains, who mock our own rule of law and counternarcotics efforts;
- A system of provincial and district leaders constituted of local power brokers, opportunists and strongment 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 geniune attempts at reconciliation;

As Hoh concludes:

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....to follow the logic of our stated goals, we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

While Americans would be advised to read this letter closely as well, ultimately, Afghans are the ones who are going to have to address these criticisms. Maybe it is already too late.