Vietnam wasn’t a conventional conflict either. If you’re willing to lose complete control of most of “your” country and sustain 10x higher casualties than your opponent you might have a chance, but that’s an extremely steep price to pay.
Afghanistan won, period. It doesn’t matter how Americans would like to advertise their loss - you didn’t “lose interest”, you lost, abandoned the people who were helping you, and have left thousands of innocent civilians to fend for themselves. Afghanistan is, and should be treated as, the biggest failure of the American “empire”.
That doesn't mean that the war was handled well, it clearly wasn't. But looking at a small force and confusing that with the entire might of the US military is baffling to me. "Losing interest" is a perfectly reasonable description of what happened.
> Americans would like to advertise their loss
I couldn’t care less about that. Fact is that the defeat was primarily and almost entirely political, not a military one.
> should be treated as, the biggest failure of the American
Trump: Hold my diet coke
So, they won.