To make a military analogy about the State Department reaction: suppose Mr. Hoh was a Company Commander in the 2nd MEB in Helmand and decided that the war sucked and notified his chain of command that he was going to resign. He then gets called up to Kabul for a meeting with GEN McChrystal, who offers him a promotion to Colonel and a job on the ISAF HQ staff. When that doesn't work, he gets flown to Tampa for a meeting with GEN Petraeus and an offer of a position (again as a Colonel or maybe even BG) on the CENTCOM staff. Wouldn't that generate a WTF reaction or at least raise eyebrows?

I do not believe that Steve the Planner was out of line in mentioning the PTSD issue. Mr. Hoh raised it himself in the WaPo article and stated that he suffered from it due to his experience in Iraq (mentioning that his initial reaction was to "drink myself blind").

Finally, I have to go back to my point in a previous post that Afghanistan is an extremely complicated issue that defies easy understanding or comprehension. Maybe it's a generational issue, but my gut reaction is that Mr. Hoh is naive and/or egotistical for having the moral certainty to not only resign but also publicly speak out against USG policy in Afghanistan. (In the WaPo article he states that "I want people in Iowa, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, Listen, I don't think this is right.") I can accept resignation for disagreement with policy, but taking a public position against policy when he hasn't been around long enough to understand all of the nuances is something that I feel to be close to a betrayal of his oath as a commissioned officer in the Foreign Service. But then again, to offer a criticism of Mr. Hoh - and I'd argue that he is now fair game for criticism since he has entered the political arena - it doesn't look to me like he was a Foreign Service Officer long enough to understand the ethos of the Foreign Service nor the messy and ambiguous realities of foreign policy formulation and execution.