The US was not in Afghanistan to nation build. It went there to dismantle Al Qaeda and kill bin Laden, which it did. Preventing the Taliban from retaking the na

The US was not in Afghanistan to nation build. It went there to dismantle Al Qaeda and kill bin Laden, which it did. Preventing the Taliban from retaking the nation would have been a bonus certainly. The US didn't leave after two weeks because it took a lot longer than that to find and kill bin Laden and wipe out Al Qaeda in the country. The US didn't leave after killing bin Laden because Afghanistan was a relatively inexpensive sandbox for the military industrial complex to play in, train its soldiers in, and deploy/test weapons in. US & allied troop deaths in Afghanistan have been fairly low since 2013. So Afghanistan got to act as a war training ground with low risk of losing a lot of soldiers, an exceptionally rare commodity as far as the Pentagon is concerned. Now they have to find another country to occupy.