repeat history ad nauseum

Leaving Afghanistan and leaving Viet Nam are eerily similar. My question is, "Why were our forces in either place from the get-go?" Not one citizen of South Ashburnham, MA quivered in fear of Ho Chi Minh. Not a single person from Masonville, CO lost sleep because of events in Afghanistan. Once the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden, was dispatched, my thought is that is where it should have ended. Perhaps, to provide my own answer, The Capitalistic war profiteers felt they could make a lot more money by using the American Army, Air Force and Marine Corps as a goon squad to keep an ongoing need for military materials and thereby keep their own profits rolling in. Consider the many casualties from both conflicts and the many corpses flown home to grieving families. Another question. How long will we condone human sacrifices on the altar of avarice to vainly attempt to satisfy the greed found in the fiscal souls of the war profiteers?