Understandable, but you should remember that probably the average level of awareness and knowledge (here, I mean urbane sophistication) of the typical Afghani versus the typical Iraqi is like a few hundred years, possibly more. We are literally dealing with nothing more than semi-evolved animals here.
Yeah, and I do think that makes all the difference. A lot of folks see Iraq and Afghanistan as being just simple backwards haji countries. While that’s not entirely incorrect, there is a huge difference between second-world Iraq and VERY third-world Afghanistan. The people, the “human terrain” as they call it in COIN, are totally different in practically every measurable way.