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It's not just the US that produces this particular type of failure.
The Leninist party-state the Soviets built outlasted the withdrawal, but...
How are those Post-colonial Westminster constitutions in Africa going?
How many generations do you think it would take to get the 'foundational stuff' sorted locally? How quckily / harshly would you have to filter those generations to produce a foundation of human capital capable of operating American style institutions and infrastructure?
That's very much my point. The US (and, indeed, any outsidde power) should have aimed to put in place a local style government with local style institutions and a local style military, but thought that all you needed to do was say "hey presto, democracy!" and everything else would fall into place. Too much idealism, not enough cynicism. Of course, the latter wouldn't have played well domestically.
That's who we were fighting.
The Taliban are a strange outlier by historical Afghan standards. Generally, Afghanistan has been governed by a centralized Kabul regime which distributes foreign patronage to provincial strongmen in return for nominal fealty. In theory we could have done something similar with Karzai, but he and his cronies just stole all the money instead of delivering it to clients.
Zahir Shah may have been a better choice, but I suspect all the alternatives are just different versions of failure.
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