Except for the numbers, it has. I believe it's because we never stuck around in force long enough to finish the job. We failed in Afghanistan because we went into Iraq, and we failed in Iraq because we had no realistic plan for occupation, no realistic picture of the deep divisions in Iraq, and no realistic idea of what it takes for people accustomed to autocracy for centuries to establish a democracy.

Maybe it was another fool's errand, though at least we had several thousand dead people and lots of destroyed real estate to justify our actions. Heaven knows that the British and the Soviets could never hold Afghanistan, though they both had bigger fish to fry at the time.

Or maybe the Bush White House never gave a rat's butt about Afghanistan in the first place. Iraq was already under discussion before September 2001.

There was actually a chance in Afghanistan. We also had a lot more allies in that fight, allies who have backed away from us since because of the action/adventure in Iraq.

I recall, and might be able to find, an exchange that we had ages ago when I posted a link to an article (2003 NYT, I believe) mentioning that the Taliban was back. You said it was wrong, because everyone knew we had flattened the Taliban. All your news sources said so. I let it drop, because there's no point arguing with you when you won't look at what's going on. You were wrong to listen to your sources, because they reported what they wanted to believe. The Taliban was proclaimed defeated, even though it wasn't, so we could move on to a target the Bush Administration considered more attractive. "Mission Accomplished", again.