I am not a hater of any in this conflict, yet I would like to state the obvious.
Reality is that, Americans tend to take down a dictatorship, place the weakest, controllable people in charge and then suck the satellite country year by year.
This technique does not work in the Muslim countries, where weaker men are taken down or killed. I would be inclined to say that the Taliban are indeed "real MEN", and the US was actually a conqueror there, otherwise all those afghans wouldn't greet the Taliban's return.
You can fight a guerilla war, but usually conquerors can't win something like that, as you don't know who will pull out a AK and kill you, a 6︀ year old or a 90 year old woman with no teeth in her mouth.