I ' m not sure how you managed to draw the conclusion that I ' m complaining . <| sep |> It ' s just you . <| sep |> Wow I only just made that connection and I ' ve been playing New Vegas and FO 2 for years . <| sep |> It ' s cute how you find snow nice . In Canada it ' s more Ginette , get me the big shovel , tabarnac <| sep |> You are giving the US government way too much credit . Why do you think the Soviets stuck around for as long as they did ? Do you think they were making billions extracting resources ? Just like us they had already invested so much that tossing in just a little bit more sounded reasonable . Just like in Iraq , we invaded Afghanistan knowing next to nothing about the country . The fucking DEA had to be tapped right after 911 because the CIA never thought cultivating human networks in a central Asian Islamic shithole was a good idea . Afghanistan isn ' t my area of expertise I ' m more into Iraq and Syria but from what I gather you are seeing more conflict for a couple of reasons . Just like in 2003 when the US shifted focus from Afghanistan to Iraq , the Taliban saw it as a potential opportunity to kill or maim so many Americans that the government really thought long and hard about leaving . The second major reason would be the rise of ISIS within Afghanistan itself . In Syria , the official alQaeda branch alNusra originally held the title for most brutal executions in the region till ISIS got big . Same with the Taliban , they used to be the bad guys till an ISIS group in Paktika I think rounded up all the Taliban leaders late at night . They waited till morning and then the ISIS dudes laid out a line of explosives . They told the Taliban leaders to kneel over the explosives in a long line . They read their hibbity jibbity , Allah Snackbarred a few times and BOOOOOMMMMMM , human body parts getting launched into orbit . Overall China is going to excel in Afghanistan . Just like in Sudan they have no qualms about swapping weapons for resources and throughout Africa they have gained a lot of experience in mineral extraction in areas with no or crappy infrastructure .