The USA wasn't trying to fight a war there. As I note in my argument of non-believers in human rights having no right to oppose their own oppression....I don't really have any issues eliminating 90% or even higher of these elements until sanity emerges. If I were in charge I'd be flying in those with seeds of civilized thought into Western countries for training and acculturation, and destroy the hardliners meanwhile. And when the hardliners are sufficiently decimated, fly back them in as consultants or if they prefer as citizens back in Afg and so on.
USSR tried that for a decade. Then US. But reality is such conversion would take few generations at least. Good luck convincing tax payers that 50 years occupational forces are worth it.
I am saying that the previous approaches were too soft and light handed. The Taliban hasn't ever faced an opponent that wants their annihilation at an existential level.
These countries were simply fighting a war of economic or other interests. I hate Taliban at a very core level itself and want their complete annihilation. A war conducted by those with a strong intrinsic motivation like this would be much different from those previous engagements.
I think you underestimate how complex society is. And how that complexity connects the hardliners, the moderates and the collaborators.
Take a look at Nazis approach in eastern europe in 1941. USSR was not exactly beloved in western territories. Be it Baltic states, modern western Belarus or modern western Ukraine. Even deeper in pre-1939-USSR many people weren't exactly happy with the leadership. Nazis had a perfect situation to make use of this sentiment to push forwards towards main goal of annihilating Stalin regime. Yet they decided that'd be too soft and light handed on the locals. That was not exactly great to turn locals against you.
And the local sentiments was in big part due to Soviet not-light-handed approach in 1939-41. When even many proponents changed their minds after seeing too many trains leaving for Siberia. All they had left were full-on collaborators who managed top switch back-and-forth between Soviets and Nazis several times :) I doubt such sleazy partners is what you want to build the new better superafghan...
The difference is that Europeans there were at least partially civilized so there was some raw material to work with.
The Taliban have nothing of civilization in them. They actively resist and hate civilization. There is no reforming them.
You also underestimate the amount of hatred a local person of sane mind would have against the Taliban. The most rabid haters of any shitty system are often those who escaped it personally. If you can supply and support such people they would be much more violent and extreme in suppressing the Taliban than any external Western person could be. If we are taking the example of Nazis, just look at the attitude of Jews who survived and began assassinating Nazis after the war vs American etc liberators who just chose to "forget" everything after the war.
