Is the Taliban Really a Nation State?

9-11 set the terms. There's probably no nation state and certainly not an imperial one that would respond with overwhelming military force to something like that. But it doesn't mean it's right. And there are all sorts of questions that have never been asked. What if the US had not spent 20 years destroying this country? Despite what everybody says, we were not nation building. That regime was incredibly brutal. Nobody's disputing that. And incredibly unpopular.