Well, I guess we could get into a really philosophical discussion here. It could be (quite convincingly) argued that the increase in and vast majority of local-on-local violence would not be so were it not for the massive presence of a foreign invading army. At what point are the American forces absolved of responsibility? It's an illegal war that has needlessly killed over half a million people (and only around 1 percent of them being Americans), and displaced many millions more from their homes. Decades of foreign military intervention/meddling in that region has been responsible for turning once prosperous (relatively speaking) countries into dangerous war zones with little semblance of a normal, functioning, society.

Show me a hero, be he American or Afghani or Iraqi, and I will applaud that person's deeds. But by and large, terrorism, whether by means of crashing planes into buildings or by willfully participating in an invasion, is worthy of nothing more than scorn. Some guy posting a picture of himself in combat fatigues on reddit isn't worthy of a "thank you". We have no way of knowing if he just came back from disarming an IED and saving his platoon or if he just came back from blowing up mud houses and killing civilians. Blind, jingoistic military worship is a dangerous thing.

My two cents.