For the Bush administration, they ignored initial recommendations to work with the locals after the initial invasion, creating a lot of unemployed, angry, young people with military training. For the Obama administration, they ignored recommendations to increase the military presence to a level that they could effectively remove the Taliban. Forces were kept low so they could keep saying "we're bringing the troops home" during speaches. It was like quitting an antibiotic treatment too soon; we eliminated the low hanging fruit, but the Taliban that remained had even better training, and could point to our prescence as a recruiting tool.