One trillion dollars to bring back the Taliban!

Many times I wonder how come ordinary Americans don’t go crazy with everything going on in the US? The ordinary American with bills to pay and mortgages and kids who would like a holiday their parents cannot provide - how do they sleep at night knowing their government, the guys they presumably voted for, waste trillions of dollars on basically nothing?
President Trump just mentioned the other day, rather proudly, the enormous cost of the Afghan war - something like $50 billion a year. Do a bit of research and you’ll discover the cost of the whole Afghan adventure, starting 2001, now stands at more than one trillion dollars!
‘We’re protecting the world!’, Trump said and many are probably inclined to believe him. Who doesn’t remember 9/11 and those horrible Taliban huddled in their caves plotting the destruction of the United States and the Western world? Money well spent, you might say. Had to be done. There was no other way…
Guess what? The nasty Taliban are still there and the US envoy is currently negotiating with them. When the US troops are finally brought home guess who’s going to run the country? The Taliban, you got it! Just like they did in 2001.

Make America safe again?

Last month there was a first round of negotiations in Doha, Americans and Taliban militias sitting at the same table. There will be another round this months. Sure, the Taliban appear to be more moderate, promising more rights for women, albeit within the framework of a new constitution based on the Islamic law. Sharia, that is. As for the situation on the ground, violence is continuing, dozens of security forces were killed yesterday in attacks in the northern part of the country, as the Taliban have vowed to keep fighting until the US withdraw their troops. Fair enough!
The US-supported government in Kabul is so widely unpopular the president Ashraf Ghani wasn’t even invited to the peace talks. The Americans kept him informed, it is said. Being just a puppet, he holds no power, unlike the Taliban who control 70% of the country.
To sum it up - one trillion dollars spent, a lot of US and foreign soldiers, including Romanian, dead, and for what?
To give the power back to the Taliban?

One trillion dollars is a big enough number to make your head spin and possibly explode, but I doubt many ordinary Americans are aware of these facts. Come to think of it, many of today’s young adults don’t even remember 9/11 as they were too young at the time. I wonder how many of them know where Afghanistan even is? As for reading about boring stuff like this, who’s go the time? Certainly not the roughly 10 million Americans who tuned in to watch America’s Got Talent on Monday. I guess this is how Americans can live with themselves, watch crap TV, eat crap food and let the guys in Washington do their thing…
As an unconcerned observer, my only curiosity at the moment is what’s going to happen with the opium production, which according to US sources is ‘through the roof’. The Taliban had eradicated opium production prior to 2001, but now they need money to fight the foreign invaders. Would it be too much to suspect the Taliban will be allowed to grab the power on condition the lucrative opium trade continues?

Thanks for reading