THIS MOMENT REQUIRES ACTION, PROCESSING

Enraged. Appalled. Not surprised. These are words we have all heard and perhaps uttered in reaction to the rapidly unfolding events in Afghanistan. Many are enraged over a U.S. departure that will leave thousands — if not millions — in harm’s way as the Taliban resumes control. Many are appalled by what they see as a waste of two decades of American investment in Afghanistan, totaling more than $2.2 trillion. Others assert, with a degree of resignation, that what is taking place now was inevitable, so let’s just move along.

Having lived in conflict zones and studied violence and war for just about as long as the U.S. has been in Afghanistan, I know one thing to be certain: There is never one thing. Wars, and the violence and trauma that accompany them, are exceedingly complex. “Good guys” can also be “bad guys,” and bad guys good. There are no “saviors.” People are complicated, and even those intending to do good often end up doing harm. For many Americans, the war in Afghanistan has been boiled down to an erroneously simple choice in regards to military presence: stay, or go. Our brains veer towards simplicity, even when the facts require complexity.

One implication of the speed with which the Taliban takeover has occurred is that our officials, and the wider American public, can barely process what we are seeing, let alone what we aren’t seeing. With nearly all news reports focused on Kabul and even more narrowly on the Kabul airport, most Americans have very little concept of what is confronting the over 30 million Afghans living outside of the capital city.

To be sure, this moment requires emergency action, including evacuations and life-saving efforts. But it also requires processing. It requires asking the questions all too often left out of the simplistic “in or out” paradox, confronting our responsibilities, the actions pursued in our names, and considering our course of action moving forward.

On Monday, President Joe Biden said, “We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear

goals: Get those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001, and make sure al-qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.” To be clear, making sure something doesn’t happen is often just as hard as making sure it does. It requires control and influence. Biden’s statement includes an implicit goal not just of military defeat, but of power influence. Indeed, in the early days of the U.S. invasion, President George W. Bush made clear that a “friendly regime” in Kabul was necessary, and voiced intent to support “reconstruction” by invoking the Marshall Plan.

In order for the American people to support the financial and human investment required to ensure a “friendly regime,” compelling narratives were shared, including calls for action in the face of massive human rights abuses by the Taliban. Americans were rightly appalled by the extreme harm inflicted not only on women and girls, but also on boys and men, minority groups and others by the Taliban.

While the cruelty of the Taliban is not disputed, the framing of the narrative created a story in the minds of most Americans that was at best simplistic, and at worst neo-colonial. While there was — and continues to be — altruistic intent behind much of the U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, we cannot escape the fact that even this good intent was embedded in notions of power and influence that are fundamentally U.s.-centric. Seeing a country — an entire constellation of people, land, history, traditions — through a lens that is fundamentally exogenous was always problematic.

America waged a war — perhaps the most consequential action a president (or four) can take. We owe it to ourselves, to our troops, to all who served out of uniform, and to a country we occupied for 20 years to not look away. To challenge simplistic explanations, and to challenge our leaders to do better going forward. President Biden claimed that nation-building was never the goal in Afghanistan. As scholars and policy makers, we can debate definitions of nation-building; as Americans we must acknowledge that shaping and influencing an Afghanistan that heeded our strategic wishes was always the goal, and was always doomed. Only if we reflect can we strive towards preventing it happening again.