You can’t kill people into compliance with a Regime they hate.
They didn’t hate us.
We had to betray them to get them to hate us.
We betrayed the Afghans early on by abandoning the moderate Massoud in favor of the gangster Hekmatyar, and that was because even though we knew Hekmatyar was a thug, he was favored by Pakistan, and Clinton wanted to keep on Pakistan’s good side in the hope the Paks wouldn’t go nuclear on his watch. The Paks opposed the more civilized Massoud because Massoud was an Afghan nationalist, and had good relations with India. Pakistan has hopes of taking over Afghanistan as well as the Kashmir one day.
As for the “antiwar” crowd, it betrays everyone, eventually, because it isn’t actually pacifist- it is all for war, conquest and even colonialism just so long as Russians are doing it. And that is because most of the crowd is old communists who think if they just keep trying they can make it work.
I’m sure WW2 proves that postulate incorrect, but I get your point.