A vast majority of the NATO countries withdrew nearly all their combat troops a decade ago. If they were interested in defeating the Taliban, perhaps they should have done something in that past decade.
"if we just had more soldiers we'd finally be able to kill all their dudes" = a famously robust approach to winning low-intensity, asymmetric and politically complex conflicts in developing countries, with a long and successful history
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come