There's a distinct difference in purpose, theoretically speaking, between "invading to control" and "invading to punish and destroy".
Your operational requirements are significantly different, so I'm told by several military folks I've talked to, none of whom attempted to play down the Afghan resolve, but simply pointed out that if we didn't care about "keeping it", we would not encounter (all of) the same difficulties Ivan did.
When we British used to run the biggest empire the world has ever seen, we used to call them "punitive expeditions". They never did anyone a bit of fucking good, except a few colonial administrators. Oh, and they never worked against Afghanistan. And still won't, for the same reason. What happens to the Afghans if the US take and burn every city, bomb every dam, every generator, mine every road? Just what has been happening to them for the last 30 years, that's what. And Taliban or worse for another generation. The only way to change Afghanistan is to let the Afghans do it. And most of the ones who could are in Iran now, the only country in the world that helped them when the so-called west was supporting what became the Taliban. Bush II isn't behaving like Hitler, but like some British colonial general circa 1825-1880 We have statues of them dotted around central London. So-and-so the conqueror of Sind. Whats-his-name the hero of the Punjab. No-one now remembers who they were, or anything about them, unless they happened to have a city named for them, or become Prime Minister of some remote colony, or die nobly surrounded by hordes of locals asking impolitely for their land back. Ken Brown