Extreme combat superiority does not mean you are fighting a combat where that achieves your objectives. The reason the Taliban did not have to reckon with the full potential of the US military is because the US unleashing it's full power on them would be stupid. Your power is actually limited by the boundaries of rationality. The US (and to a lesser degree Russia) could in theory vaporize every city in any country, and kill everyone there. That's not actually a coherent goal (unless you like fantasizing about how powerful you are), and so it doesn't actually happen.
The development of nukes greatly reduced the possibilities of war between major nation states, and in the conflicts with minor states, nukes are not under consideration for use. Russia has never actually done any move with their nuclear weapon regiments to indicate using them, even though they are actively locked in a dumb war they underestimating that is costing hundreds of thousands of Russian lives. America kicked the Taliban out of power but could not keep the Taliban out of power, whether you left immediately or after 20 years. Your combat superiority doesn't mean you can defeat foreign militancies. Time and time again you have not defeated them. That is the reality. Fantasizing about unleashing the full combat superiority of the US military (nuking the entire landscape petulantly) to show that you are powerful is not a credible or coherent outcome... and lo it does not happen.
Finally, the US has waged total war since the end of WW2. Almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed in the Korean War. All of the dams and civilian infrastructure were entirely destroyed by US bombs. US bombers couldn't even find targets to indiscriminately bomb toward the end. And yet the US did not defeat the North Koreans.
(As a final note, DPRK started that war, not the US or its allies, so the primary objectives were inherently different and more defensive. Nonetheless, the use of total war did not achieve ultimate the victory it was aimed at.)