The lesson from Afghanistan is the same as the one from Vietnam: you cannot force a Western-style republic on a nation that does not want it and it is a waste of blood and treasure to try. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”-Albert Einstein.
The funny thing is, in Vietnam today, the people there are very pro-capitalist, despite the government. Quietly, the government pretty much abandoned Communism in the mid-80s. Outside of the occasional pics of Ho Chi Minh, you’d never know Vietnam is a Communist state. Authoritarian, yes, but that’s a lot of countries on the planet these days.