Wasn’t the whole plan to be nicer to them, and they’ll be nicer to us? I mean, look at all those horrible things we do that made them attack us on 9/11. We buy their oil at whatever price they set, we don’t convert to Islam, we let our women drive cars and go to school, we like bacon, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The crusades that America was directly involved in didn’t help relations. We literally threw them out of Spain when they were just tourists. And now, as one of Obama’s great mentors once said, America’s chickens have come home to roost.
I have spoken to forces recently returned from Afghanistan. Apparently training of Afghan troops is going well for dealing with immediate threats, but there is still a problem with developing their long term thinking/planning capabilities. I don’t know if this is also true of the Taliban.