After the U.S. invasion in 2001, the U.S. government spent more than $600 million to support elections and democratic procedures in Afghanistan (part of the $143 billion the U.S. spent there for relief and reconstruction). Washington bragging points were always more important than Afghan preferences. "In 2002 and 2003, when Afghan tribal councils gathered to write a new constitution, the U.S. government gave [bribes] to delegates who supported Washington's preferred stance on human rights and women's rights," the Washington Post reported in 2019. President George W. Bush boasted in 2004: "Afghanistan has now got a constitution which talks about freedom of religion and talks about women's rights…Democracy is flourishing." Though Bush's reelection campaign speeches were larded with such lines, women in many parts of Afghanistan continued to be oppressed even worse than characters in American country music songs. One international aid worker commented that during the Taliban era "if a woman went to market and showed an inch of flesh she would have been flogged—now she's raped."

Hamid Karzai, the slick operator who the Bush administration installed to rule Afghanistan after 9/11, won a rigged 2004 presidential election. Karzai approved a law that entitled a husband to starve his wife if she refused his sexual demands.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama labeled the conflict in Afghanistan the "right war." By the time Obama took office, the Taliban were vigorously reviving and Afghans were shunning the corrupt puppet regime the U.S. installed in 2002.