US diplomat resigns over Afghan war......

A State Department diplomat disillusioned with US involvement in Afghanistan has become the first US official known to resign in protest over the eight-year war, The Washington Post said Tuesday. Matthew Hoh, 36, was the senior State Department official in Afghanistan's Zabul province, a hotbed for Taliban militants, until he resigned last month. His background in both civil and military fields may have seemed the perfect fit for President Barack Obama's administration as it steps up its counterinsurgency efforts in the war-torn country. But in a September 10 letter to the State Department's personnel chief, Hoh wrote: "I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan...Link