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Not my words... the word of the denizens of Kabul regarding who they hold responsible. That is the key issue... it does not matter whether this view has merits or demerits... rather is simply that this perception exists and that it is real in the Afghan populace:
"Fruit vendors in the city’s relatively safe downtown and students at universities struck a similar tone and added a frequently heard argument: If the Americans leave, then the Taliban will no longer have an excuse to wage war.
“During the Taliban regime there were no suicide attacks, but since these people have shown up in our country, we have faced lots of adversity,” said Nasrullah, a shopkeeper in Kabul’s dilapidated downtown, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “When they leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will stop fighting; it is only because of these foreigners they are fighting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/wo...ghanistan.html
All that matters is that the perception on the ground in Afghanistan is very real and predictable.
It would be comparable to if a Chinese Army occupied Alabama... the conservative baptists would rally around religion and fight with any means possible to remove this foreign presence. The locals, were they to be killed in shops and banks by their native Alabaman insurgents would not lay the blame at the feet of their brethren... but rather at the feet of the Chinese who had no place being there in the initial. The same phenomena happened in Vietnam.
"Fruit vendors in the city’s relatively safe downtown and students at universities struck a similar tone and added a frequently heard argument: If the Americans leave, then the Taliban will no longer have an excuse to wage war.
“During the Taliban regime there were no suicide attacks, but since these people have shown up in our country, we have faced lots of adversity,” said Nasrullah, a shopkeeper in Kabul’s dilapidated downtown, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “When they leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will stop fighting; it is only because of these foreigners they are fighting.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/wo...ghanistan.html
All that matters is that the perception on the ground in Afghanistan is very real and predictable.
It would be comparable to if a Chinese Army occupied Alabama... the conservative baptists would rally around religion and fight with any means possible to remove this foreign presence. The locals, were they to be killed in shops and banks by their native Alabaman insurgents would not lay the blame at the feet of their brethren... but rather at the feet of the Chinese who had no place being there in the initial. The same phenomena happened in Vietnam.