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When George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, his target was, I suppose, to root out the terrorist network of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Recently, Joe Biden said that the USA didn't go to Afghanistan for nation-building.
So, if Bin Laden was killed in 2011 and the USA was not building the nation of Afghanistan, why did the USA stay in Afghanistan beyond 2011?
The question assumes that the US invaded Afghanistan solely to punish Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden. While this was indeed the main motivation, there are also some complex political reasons at play.
These points show that the full-scale invasion of Afghanistan did not solely obey a simple strategic goal against Al Qaeda and its leader, it also served a political goal as a mighty display of power targeted against an openly hostile country. This was important for domestic politics in particular, because the US public was expecting a strong military answer, not only some invisible intelligence operations.
There was no clear plan about what happens after the invasion. Due to the reasons mentioned above, the original plan could be roughly summarized as "shoot first, think later". But once the US-led coalition successfully occupied Afghanistan, it became de facto responsible for managing it. Additionally it turned out that the Talibans were very successful at guerilla warfare (what a surprise), making it impossible to pacify the whole country.
So not only the US (and their allies) ended involved with a continuous state of guerilla warfare in Afghanistan, they also found themselves responsible with re-building the country since they are the occupying power. Politically speaking, the occupying forces could not abandon the country because:
Additionally, in the US psyche there is also the trauma of the Vietnam war: no politician wants to be seen as the one who orders the troops back home, with the enemies immediately controlling the whole country. This would be perceived as a crushing defeat.
For all these reasons, the US-led coalition stayed much longer than they expected in Afghanistan. They tried to form a functioning government and a reasonably well trained army, and this takes time. The goal was political: they had to make it look like the Afghanistan war was a reasonably successful mission, not a costly and humiliating mistake like Vietnam.
Not sure this counts as a full answer, but here goes.
The Afghanistan quagmire was probably largely unintentional, just like the Iraqi one. If you read up on the level of group thinking and hubris under the Bush administration circa 2001-03, it is pretty amazing in its naivety. I read a number of these books, mostly about Iraq though. These people truly thought that, once the natives were gifted with the insights of US democracy and free marketry they would see the light and things would magically fall into place.
After the Iraq invasion, the US tried, quite hard, to get the UN to carry the bag for them. The UN was reluctant, and when their envoy was killed by a car bomb, they entirely demurred, leaving the US in charge.
Once it was clear no one else was going to do their work for them, the US then had to try to put in place a government suitable for their interests. That didn't really happen in Iraq, but at least they left a government of sorts in charge in 2008, even though Western countries had to bail Iraq out from ISIS 6 years later.
In Afghanistan no stable government has been achieved to date, despite years of, competent or not, attempts to do so. Not unlike South Vietnam (at a political rather than military level) the US-backed governments never found much legitimacy, were frequently accused of corruption and commanded only limited performance from its own military.
Pretty sure the US would have loved to leave the locals in charge, had they managed to have a viable government that suited them handy earlier on. (that there is no oil in Afghanistan only strengthens my gut feeling about this).
FWIW, Biden's take in 2008/9, reported in Obama's Wars by Woodward was to leave only a strong anti-terrorist force capable of rooting out anti-US terror groups if needed, not controlling the country. Note that this is 2-3 years before OBL gets killed. OBL's last real undisputable presence in Afghanistan was during the Tora Bora battle in late 2001. The context was also that the US had just semi-stabilized Iraq with the "surge" under Petraeus and the Pentagon felt they could do it again in Afghanistan, given 40K more troops.
Apparently, the US has resigned itself that if #1 and #3 can't be achieved, then perhaps the Taliban can be cajoled into #2. Which isn't necessarily a bad call: the Taliban know that they managed to oppress Afghanis just fine despite international outcry, until OBL pulled off 9/11. So they will probably be wary of being threatening enough to motivate another regime change.
To quote another user's answer, concerning the US and Iran this time (my bolding):
Invasions are commitments of the utmost gravity. You're not just committing materiel for the opening, kinetic phase of the war, but also a permanent force to occupy and govern. This was the key strategic error the United States made in the second Iraq war, they conquered Iraq easily but could not then govern or even effectively and swiftly prop up a new government. The costs for invading even a nation that offers no credible military threat to you are far in excess of what most observers understand.
In summary, the US stayed more by accident, and yes, by initial hubris, than by design. Later, they desperately did not want to lose face, even as they realized their "plan" to kickstart Afghanistan into the 21st century wasn't working.
Well, if the USA was so forward-seeing and competent, why did they not do their best to gain influence in Afghanistan in 1992, once Najibullah got kicked out, and before 1994 when the Taliban kicked out the warlords? Had they cared the Afghans would have looked a lot more kindly on the people who had helped booting the Russians. Instead, helping with reconstruction and nation-building was proposed by some in Congress and quickly ditched as policy. This was most unkind to the Afghans (who deserve massive credit for helping rid the world of the USSR), set the world up for the events of 9/11 and, coincidentally, also totally against Pivot Theory. So, despite Pivot Theory being 100 years old it was totally ignored from 1992-94 but nefariously revived in 2001??? India, more calculating, but also with more immediate reasons to (Pakistan), has tried to support and gain influence with the US-backed governments.
According to Pivot Theory, Afganistan is the center of the so-called Heartland (which is meant to be Eurasia).
It's a very important region for projecting politics/power and influence into Central Asia.
Different superpowers: British Empire (during The Great Game), USSR during the first Cold War, and then the US nowadays tried to maintain control over it. But no one succeeded, as we can see.
PS
One of the benefits the US gained during these 20 years was a 20 times increase in drugs production - which were then transported to Russia/China causing drug usage. That point - reducing drug production - was also discussed during the last Taliban visit to Moscow. When the Taliban was in power, before the US invasion, drugs production was way lower than nowadays.
It's because the US wanted more than to kill Osama bin Laden. Here's a recent quote about why the US invaded Afghanistan in the first place.
A long-time skeptic of the 20-year military presence there, Biden said the United States had long ago achieved its original rationale for invading the country in 2001: to root out al-Qaeda militants and prevent another attack on the United States like the one launched on Sept.11, 2001. The mastermind of that attack, Osama bin Laden, was killed by a U.S. military team in 2011.
Rooting out al-Qaeda militants was one goal, which was achieved in 2011. The other - to prevent another attack on the US like the one on 11/9/2001 - is presumably what the next 10 years in Afghanistan was for.
