We did worse than dangle a carrot or tease. We used our military to prop up a more liberal social system in which women were able to climb to ranks of professional success and even limited power. That sounds like a good thing, except those very women are now at risk of their lives.

Did you hear for example that the Afghan women’s soccer team have been advised to eliminate their social media profiles and burn their uniforms? Lest the Taliban discovered they violated gender roles by playing sports, and then take some kind of vengeance on them.

That is a realistic possibility, unfortunately.

That’s just one example of how Afghan women believed the United States would stand by its promises of stability and allyship.

Women who trusted us, who became professionals, who became school teachers, who became politicians, who became athletes — — these are the women the Taliban is now going to target.

If we had not gone in, if we had not engaged in nation building, these women would not have had the opportunity to contribute to society but they would also not now be at risk of their lives.

I think we were wrong to go in the way we did, because nation building has a tragic history of not working. But we did go in. And I believe we have a moral obligation to deal with the consequences.

We won’t, though. We’ll wash our hands and turn our backs, and while there might be some guilty wailing for a while, that will simply be the end of things.

And Afghan women will suffer.