That's not quite the point I was trying to make, but I was being cryptic, I suppose.

The US fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan using the Mujahideen as their proxy fighters. Then, when the US no longer needed them to be their proxy fighters, the US abandoned them and the rest of people of Afghanistan. In the vacuum left from that war, the Taliban arose as a way of returning some semblance of order to a society in total chaos. But the Taliban was mostly made up of people who had grown up with war, and they knew nothing about how to live in any kind of normal society. So the society they created was a reflection of the only reality they ever knew. That is just one of the tragic stories of what happens when we use proxies to fight our wars.

And then, of course, all of the subsequent events that involve Afghanistan, including the 9/11 attacks, can, in one way or another, be connected to that one proxy war.