I fine your geo-political take, less than average.
1. We degraded the Taliban severely at the height of the Afghan War. Nobody, unless they are willing to bomb thousands of villages with civillians, will beat Taliban. Our only mistake, and it was a big one, was not leaving after 6 months. Bush was an idiot.
2. We don’t have to confront Russia or China (another story completely). All we have to do is provide a serious deterrent. Russia is the joke and will only advance when they see a defenseless victim.
3. Perpetual War theory is fantasy. If anybody wants a perpetual war, it is Russia. Except they are not willing to confront a serious military, only move a few pawns against defenseless pawns.
And if the Taliban’s power was curtailed, so what? What did it accomplish? What did it cost us? And now, Afghanistan is back to the way it was. The US also ends up with many more Muslims here thanks to Bush/Cheney wars. The only reason we had 9/11 was because we let them in.
Deter Russia from what? Most of Europe is committing suicide by mass immigration. Russia is the least of their problems.
The perpetual war crowd is the military industrial complex. War is quite profitable.
There won’t be any large scale wars between nuclear powers. No more tank battles on the plains in Europe. We will fight stupid proxy wars in defenseless, dirt-bag countries for no good cause.