They don't need colonization. This isn't the white man's burden.

If we had spent the amount of money that we spent dropping bombs on them (and their wedding parties), shooting them, and doing constant surveillance on them, it would have been much more difficult for religious extremists to appeal to anyone.

The only choice the US offered them was between a dystopian, repressive existence under a high-tech US military regime or a dystopian, repressive existence under religious extremists. They chose the latter because at least the rule would come from people of their own religion and the Taliban wouldn't be so far ahead of them in technology that they couldn't be cast off or pressured to reform.