What American leaders, policy and doctrine struggle to recognize, is that those affected by our actions care little for our good intentions.

We can appreciate why a Russian invasion of Afghanistan sparked a resistance insurgency against the Russian invaders and a revolutionary insurgency against the puppet regime they put in power; but we cannot fathom why the US invasion and installation of a puppet regime would create the exact same effect.

There will be matters of degree based on the character of one's actions, but the primary effect is rooted in human nature and driven by the nature of the action.

We must have an assumption that any occupation - be it a small unit doing a training event to build partner capacity, or a full blown regime change invasion - will spark some degree of resistance in some portion of the affected population. This is natural.

Likewise, we must have an assumption that any government we help to rise to power or to merely stay in power will spark some degree of revolutionary energy against them by some portion of the population. The greater the perceived popular illegitimacy of the government based on our actions, the greater the revolutionary energy and the broader it will be across the affected population. Again, this is natural.

Bottom line, is that American fecal matter is just as odiferous as anyone else's. Truth.