Matt is a "3161" State Department employee, a special category of temporary appointments brought on for 12 month assignments in certain areas of expertise-- engineering, ag, business, rule of law, etc. Some may sign on for a second 12-month tour.

This is a very different thing than being an FSO-- a commissioned, career diplomat who is a generalist and is appointed not as a result of an online job application and single interview (sometimes over the phone), but after a series of competitive oral, written, and physical exams.

Referring to Matt as a "U.S. Official" is about as accurate as referring to a postal employee as a U.S. official.

I am not trying to denigrate 3161s or postal employees! But this article gets such basic facts wrong about Matt that I am astounded, and either bespeaks very poor journalism or, worse, an article produced primarily to push a specific political agenda and that knowingly uses false facts to give a certain impression.

There are hundreds, perhaps over 1000, 3161s in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many, many of them are ex-military (having done multiple tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan), and have also faced combat, death, etc., just like Matt bravely did. In my own PRT, we are rocketed frequently, have small arms fire, IEDs, etc., hit our movement teams, you name it.

My point is that as compelling as Matt's story sounds to civilians, it is a fairly typical story here in theater, and by no means gives one any special insight.

There are so many people here with the same experience--or much more experience--that would passionately disagree with Matt's assessment.

Maybe Matt is right; maybe not. But to present his memo and resignation as a significant event of a "U.S. official" with special insight is, with all due respect to Matt, patently absurd. He is a de factor contractor that was on the ground in his PRT about 4 months! On that, one assesses strategic counterinsurgency??

And I absolutely guarantee the only reason Matt warranted an audience with Holbrooke and sudden offers of a Kabul job on the Embassy's front office was that the State Department was well aware of plans to go very public at a critical time-- plans for articles like this splashed over front pages, offers from detractors of Afghan policy to meet and speak, etc. I don't know Matt well and will not impugn his motivations, I believe he is no doubt sincere. But there is nothing special about him that's not special about hundreds of others still in theater, and I cannot believe that he has simply stumbled into the current publicity without discussions with many people about how to use this situation for maximum effect.

http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2009/10/putting-matthew-hoh-context-and-asking-hard-questions-washington-post.html

CNAS was started by Michele Flournoy and Kurt Campbell (who, though it is unclear, is a pro football player both Canadian and NFL, from Kingston Jamaica).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mich%C3%A8le_Flournoy

doesn't accept every last bit of what Glenn writes, he is responsible for defending every last transgression Glenn has ever written about.

That's a complex way of spinning it but doesn't make it a true statement.

What "bits/transgressions" of what Glenn writes about (absent your viewpoint that because we aren't outside the legal definition of "occupation" we aren't in fact "occupying" other nations) have UT commenters held you out as "responsible for defending"?

We all know you agree with us in principle about torture and war crimes, and who commited them and that they should be held legally accountable, so is it that we disagree about the when, where, why, and how regarding the principle of benevolent and/or necessary "interventionism"?