> After winning their proxy war against the Soviets, the US declined to rebuild from the devastation, leaving a vacuum for the Taliban to step into.

That's true, but where's the evidence that the Taliban's appearance, several years after the Soviets left, was a crafty US design rather than the result of local conditions?

The rebuilding of Afghanistan would have cost far more than "pocket change." But that's beside the point. No U.S. Congress would have voted that funding, because the public had no interest in Afghanistan. Few Congressmen would wish to be known as spenders of "taxpayer cash" (as it is now often called) for a "Marshall Plan" for a distant third-world country, particularly since the U.S. was not directly involved.

What's more, your entire argument seems inconsistent. If America wanted oil (or anything else) out of Afghanistan, why not grab it as soon as the Russians left? Did Washington miss out on that obvious opportunity, only to be so fiendishly clever, years later, as to create the Taliban, engineer its takeover (more years later), and get it to harbor Al Qaeda to provide just the excuse for a NATO invasion? And having that kind of godlike genius, would America then spend more than a decade there accomplishing nothing of an obvious imperialist/colonialist nature?

I don't buy it.