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Featured speaker Matthew Hoh is an American former Maring Corps captain and former State Department appointee. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hoh studied at Tufts University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. His career as a U.S. Marine included service during the Iraq War. He resigned his commission as a Captain and left the Marines in 2004 to become a civilian contractor in Iraq. At one point he supervised as many as 5,000 Iraqi people and was responsible for distributing tens of millions of dollars to reconstruction projects. Hoh returned to the Marines in 2006. In 2009 Hoh resigned from his appointment in Afghanistan in protest of the strategy being used in the war in Afghanistan and became an outspoken opponent of large U.S. troop deployment in the conflict. In his four page resignation letter, Hoh questioned why the war was being fought and to what end. He stated that the US presence was fueling the resistance movement in Afghanistan and providing a convenient villain for the 35 year old cottage industry of warfare. He wrote that: I fail to see the value or the worth in continued US casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year-old civil war...I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan...I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end. -Matthew Hoh, resignation letter. Upon resigning, Hoh was offered an embassy staff position in Kabul by U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry. After refusing, he was flown to Washington, D.C., where Richard Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, offered him a stateside diplomatic job, which he accepted, changing his mind a week later and resigning. In April 2010 Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize for truth-telling. The Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) is a non-profit community organization that seeks to promote understanding of international issues by hosting community forums with informed speakers from around the world. ICFRC is housed within and supported in part by International Programs at the University of Iowa. International Programs, your global intersection, connects students, faculty, staff, and the Iowa community to the world. Visit the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council onlinefor more information.