Blaming afghan elites is an easy cop-out. That both ignores and deliberately neglects the fact that the elites that got up and ran for the exit as soon as it was clear they wouldn't be able to withstand the Taliban coming back. But first those elites were propped up by the United States, for the best part of those 20 years, and more damningly, the bigger issue that the media refuses to or is unwilling to engage with, is that you have a monstrous imperial military industrial complex, which the media is part of, which makes money from wars, and Afghanistan is no exception, and there is enough documentation on how much money was made by military contractors, who were given contracts by the Pentagon. The whole warmaking expedition, the flames of that were fanned by the media. So why would they implicate themselves? So it is perfectly logical that they would highlight a different explanation as to why Afghanistan was broken.