Explaining Afghan War To The Families Of The Dead

From the start the Afghan War was wrong, despite an attempt by some to rewrite it since, the War was not about terrorist training camps, lack of human rights, female oppression or the blooming poppy fields which all became a belated justification afterwards, it was to punish the Taliban for not 'coughing up Bin Laden' as George W Bush put it at the time.
If they had handed him over at the time than America would probably have stepped back and left the Taliban in Government and we wouldn't be talking about the withdrawal of US and Nato troops nearly 20 years later.
What we can say with certainty is that the foreign troops were the only thing stopping the Taliban from taking back full control, they hold large swathes of the country already even with the troops there so we can be assured that they will soon shortly be picking up from where they left off in 2001.
So how to explain that to the families of the 111,000 dead Afghans, the families of the 460 dead British and 2,400 American soldiers not returning to their families sent to fight in an unwinnable war which will end in exactly the same position that it started?
It would be an insult to even try and would be worth remembering the next time an American President or British Prime Minister stands before a TV Camera and tries to explain why war is the only solution because since time immemorial, war has killed hundreds of millions and war is the ultimate failure of just plain talking to each other, it is never the only solution because there should always be more talking.