“There is no reason to care what the Afghanis think of us”
There is if we want to nation build, which is why nation building is sucha fool’s errand.
You can “nation build” better if you don’t care what the savages think.
For example, I don’t care what my kids think (much). I’m their father, not their friend. They don’t have to like me, they can hate me if they like. I’m here to protect them, provide for them, see that they educated and disciplined, and that they otherwise enter society as competent and civil human beings, not savages (which is what kids start out as...).
Same thing goes for a conquered nation. We’re their conquerors, not their friends. Do it our way, do it when we tell you - or die. They’ll understand why, eventually. They don’t have to understand right now, and they certainly don’t need to like us. They just need to be very, very afraid of us.
I think, aside from the cultural differences, that is why the Germans and Japanese recovered so well. They’d seen their nations utterly ruined, they knew we could do it again with no problems, and they were very appropriately afraid of us.