I think what Spencer was arguing, and what I would be inclined to argue as well, is that what he said did have merit, even if it was only as much merit as any blogger or netpundit might have. It makes sense not to want to engage in his sudden, brief fame, but it does not make corollary sense to disregard his argument as pointless just because he did get sudden, brief fame.

As for everyone else: Hoh would have been a single human interest story and that’s it — and his mainstream arguments against the war would have remained lost in the buzz of the mainstream — had Karen DeYoung not blasted “SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER RESIGNS OMG” all over the front page of the Washington Post. And you all know it, you just also happen to agree with him (and there are PLENTY of arguments against what he said, but I find that relatively unimportant, *precisely* because he said nothing of interest).

Notice I did not call Koh a “high ranking civilian official.” I called him “the highest-ranking civilian official to resign over Afghanistan.” As far as I know, that’s true.

Is the suggestion here that he should NOT be heard? That we should not be entitled to this data point? That doesn’t sound like an appropriate reaction at all. And if saying “he’s a nobody” is the best justification you can come up with for refusing to consider the data he provides, that indicates to me that you have some kind of agenda for suppressing his information.

If you’d like to take exception to the things he actually SAYS, say, that there are insurgents fighting the US occupation who would not otherwise be fighting, then for heavens sake, let’s hear it. But just calling him a nobody isn’t going to accomplish anything…

mikey

Since your initial argument was based on Cpt. Rhodes’ being picked on by us icky liberals who lionize Matthew Hoh, you should at least admit this key fact and not try to move the goalposts when you think we’re not looking.

Obviously, I am a nobody and my opinion does NOT deserve such treatment. My point is, the same thing applies to Hoh.

I’m not defending the Post’s story or the broader presentation of Hoh. At all. Nor am I passing any judgment on his desire to go to the press, although as a journalist I can hardly blame him for not wanting to bang his head against a channel that he clearly thought was a box-ticking exercise for his superiors. And I obviously wouldn’t know who Hoh is or what he said had it not been for the Post.

But so what? All I’m saying is that the man’s critiques should stand and fall on their own merits. And I include the critiques of “random bloggers” all the time on my blog — because I’m a random blogger! Never did I say or imply that Hoh should be listened to and others excluded. It’s a wide world out there; 1000 schools of thought contend; etc. I was alarmed at seeing an important institution in the debate like AfPak Channel declare over Twitter that it was going to ignore him from now on. Whether that was what APC meant or not — and on reflection, I’m not sure it was — it strikes me as quite an extreme overcorrection of the original error of the Post playing up Hoh.