Much more importantly, 2,448 U.S. service members lost their lives and thousands more were seriously wounded.  After so much heartbreaking sacrifice, the Taliban have won the war.  It is inconceivable that the U.S. military could lose to a ragged collection of drug dealers and goat herders, but thanks to an appalling failure of leadership at the White House and in the Pentagon it has happened.  Not only have we lost, but the Taliban is actually coming out of this conflict in better shape than ever before.  Incredibly, the Taliban appears to be much stronger today than it was just prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001.

How could this happen?  For almost two decades the U.S. military has been pounding on them, and you would think that all of that pounding should have completely wiped out the Taliban by now.

But instead, the Taliban has thrived.

Everyone expected the status quo to change once the Biden administration announced that U.S. troops were leaving, but nobody expected the Taliban to conquer the entire country in just a matter of weeks.

It would have been one thing if the Taliban had reconquered the country a year or two after we left.  That would have been embarrassing, but not completely and totally humiliating.