Afghanistan will never be "pacified". You cannot bomb them into submission and you cannot change them. The British learned the hard way, Soviets learned the hard way and we are learning the hard way.
Two folks I live with spent time in Kabul as medical officers. One, a female doctor, was sitting on a bench one day waiting for a bus when a sniper took a shot at her and missed, hitting the wooden bench beside her. Instead of running, she took out a scalpel and removed the bullet as her souvenir of Afghanistan.
ETA: I remember watching on television three days after the US invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001 and watching Richard Armitage step off a Blackhawk swathed in about three layers of body armor. Knew at that point our drug ambassador had arrived to secure the poppy fields.
Yes, Col. Gritz, you are correct, sir.