Americans were acting like morons after 9/11. I don't see an analogous motivating event here for Russia.

Russians are playing the kosovo playbook.

Minority in a larger country, minority wants to separate into its own country, the main country won't let them, some conflicts and shooting, shelling, killing, and an "outside player" steps in and starts destroying the main country.

I was a freshman in college at the time and we discussed it in a geography class.

We all agreed that a nation state based approach to the problem of terrorism was absurd, but there was no way any US president would do anything less. Remembering the phrase "a wartime president has never not been re-elected" turns my stomach. Iraq of course was another matter, but Afghanistan was more of a greek tragedy.

One of the pillars of supporting dollar as world reserve currency (and thus having endless credit) is showing that it’s backed by strong security force. Thus it necessitates periodic demonstrations and actual training of said security force. Thus constant deployment to some far countries to “fight for piece”.

Go back far enough and you'll find the british empire thought Afghanistan would be a fun place to invade quite a long time before that.

It worked out just as badly for us as it did for the USSR and the US later.

I'm not sure why Afghanistan is catnip for overconfident empires, but it seems to be a repeating pattern.