Well, "the right thing" from our perspective may not be "the right thing" from your typical Afghan's perspective. He sees us as foreign invaders (which we are) and he wants us out of his country. I understand the sentiment, coming from a Christian country that was under Islam for 500 years. During those 500 years, there were plenty of people who took to the hills, fought the invaders, robbed their caravans, raided their mansions. They were the core of the 2 rebellions with which the Turks got kicked out of the country. The invaders saw them as "bandits, terrorists and insurgents" while the locals saw them as "freedom-fighters." You can imagine what happened to the collaborators.
Part of my job overseas was OMLT and POMLT operations... Essentially I was working first hand with their police and military with a mentoring team to get them ready to look after their own country. Those guys were there to get the Taliban out. So many of them have stories of things that have happened to their families.
I don't care where you are from, parading a headless corpse around in the bed of a pickup strapped to the light bars isn't the right thing to do in ANY religion... But I experienced that as well.
I was in the home of a "retired" school teacher... Well, not so much retired as he had his school destroyed by the Taliban because he refused to follow their extremist rules for teaching. He believed the girls deserved education, and he pushed the kids to not support Taliban. He spoke pretty good english (obviously was an educated man) and I had about 12 hours with the guy, he offered me food from his home.
I have many first hand accounts from interacting with locals. Most of them want a Taliban free life. I've walked those alleys and streets and I've seen how ****** it is there. I feel so bad for those kids. And it's sad to know that most of the world lives in poverty like that... We are one lucky country.
I don't know if you've ever heard of the term "Man love Thursday". It's what we call their Thursday night "fun". Which usually consists of raping boys for their own pleasure... Think it doesn't happen? I KNOW it does and it's common. We had one helper in our camp that would come in beaten up weekly, and when I finally got him to talk to me, I found out why... He tried to stand up for himself and not be raped.
Oh, and this is something very common there and something there is no punishment for. How is this allowed in any society??
It's so hard to say what the "typical" Afghan really is. In the Cities they know who the Canadians are. They know who the Americans are. In the "rural" areas they still think it's the Russians over there.
No, they don't want war there, but most of them get it that the reasoning for these foreign countries being there is to get the Taliban out.
I don't want to get all political and crap, but I've talked first hand to the people in that country, and I've seen their normal way of life.
I don't care what religion you are, and you can have whatever beliefs you want to. But, when you start to harm others and use your religion as a reasoning to it, then I have an issue.
Not directed at you, I'm just sort of saying it how it is, from someone that has been there and interacted directly with them.