<do you think the US could have done anything during the reign of the warlords and then the taliban? What government would they have provided aid to?>
You mean the ones that WE funded, that WE armed, that WE trained? Maybe you need to read a bit about who the U.S. supported and how when the Soviets were in Afghanistan or when Iraq was fighting Iran.
A lot of the problems in that part of the world are of our own making done mainly during hawkish right wing administrations of Reagan and Bush. How soon we forget... or maybe we don't want to remember...