I was talking to a reporter who spent a dozen years covering the war in Afghanistan for

the BBC and then NPR.

Quill Lawrence.

It was there for the start of the war when Afghans welcomed the Americans coming in.

The US military started building roads and hospitals.

Quill saw them cheering for that.

And then as the years passed, Quill noticed that the story that Afghans told about the

war and about the American presence there.

It started to change.

We travel all over Afghanistan and you'd hear crazy stuff about things the Americans

had done.

There would be a mini-van full of women and children going to an Afghan wedding party

in the middle of some remote province.

And it would hit a massive fertilizer bomb and would kill all these women and children.

And the Taliban who had set that bomb would absolutely succeed in convincing everyone

that it was an American air strike because the Americans hate your religion and they're

here to take your women.

Even that paved road that the Americans had built to win hearts and minds, the Taliban

would tell people, oh, you know, that was just built so they could occupy our country.

This is rough translation.

I'm Gregory Warner.

This is show about how the conversations we're having in the United States are being heard

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