If it were truly an existential threat the US would remove the Taliban very quickly (that doesn't imply a safe orderly society would result).
But Afghanistan, like Vietnam is an optional and non-essential conflict at this point with unclear definitions of victory. Maybe "victory" is packing up and going home at this point.
No, no, no. The Taliban were broadly distributed throughout Southern Afghanistan, and they had a cross border sanctuary in Pakistan.
For its own reasons (Kashmir and the regional rivalry with India), Pakistan didn’t want to alienate the Taliban, and their military and ISI thus had extensive relations with the Taliban.
The US did not have enough leverage to get Pakistan to shut down the Taliban on its side of the border, and likewise did not want the destabilization of a nuclear state with borders on China and India that would accompany violations of Pakistani sovereignty inherent in large scale bombing.
I guess it depends on your definition of "remove". I don't doubt that a Taliban government could be very quickly overthrown by the US military. Probably within weeks. Now, the Taliban as an irregular militia is a completely different manner.
I remember watching a Vice documentary on Afghanistan called "This is what winning looks like". The line that struck me was a US Marine saying something like "the average Taliban fighter fights within 15 yards of their home". If that's anything close to true, no wonder the Taliban have been so hard to defeat.
The US' mistake was not capitalizing on Russia's failure, choosing instead to make exactly the same mistake.
The Soviet Union deployed over 115k for several years. The amount of fortune spent was a serious accelerator for the decline of the USSR.
Afghanistan is a large, dispersed, and landlocked country. With huge amounts of weapons from many sides. Decades of war. Little trust between population groups.
With what, nukes? Or by sending 5 million soldiers using $400/gallon gasoline https://www.cbsnews.com/news/real-cost-of-gas-at-afghan-base... ? Like them or not, the Taliban are in their country and quite a few Afghani think like them. Let them be, with a major caveat--do not let anyone there attack us or our partners. I think they are rational enough to do that since USA did cause them a lot of problems.
They are so many problems in the world, USA cannot fix them. Not even make a dent.
In case of Afghanistan, it is not just "maybe". Packing up and go home - is a clear win for the US in Afghanistan.