September 11th, 2021, will go down as yet another day in history.

The twenty-year long American involvement in the Afghani Civil War will have ended on the 20th anniversary of the event that sparked it all, incurring the declaration of a War on Terror and the creation of a quagmire in the Middle East.

This quagmire did not begin with American involvement, nor was it instigated as such; indeed, the Middle East, particularly Afghanistan, has seen decades of turbulence and conflict. But with ill-managed and ill-timed American involvement, the issues that lay within that quagmire exploded, and lay siege to the very fabric of society for many Arab nations.

In Syria, the regime of Bashir Al-Assad missed its chance to be deposed in favor of a more equitable government.

In Iraq, after years of insurgency upon insurgency by various groups in a country where the long-suppressed majority has finally taken power, rebellion is again rampant, and anarchy threatens to consume the nation.

In Lebanon, after a devastating explosion in the Port of Beirut that put the city on the brink of starvation, calls are now being made for France to reoccupy the country it once granted independence to.

And in Afghanistan, decades of war have left the country one entirely dependent on American aid and troops. As much as America has tried to prepare the Afghan National Army to fight against the Taliban, when American troops leave, they too will fall. Much like Saigon did in 1975, Kabul will become overrun by the Taliban.

But it is because of the crisis at hand, and its spillover through terrorist attacks and refugee crises that America has contributed to, that the United States Armed Forces owe an obligation to fix the wrongs that have been committed. If the past cannot be undone, then there should be at least an attempt to try to fix the problems resulting from that past. Military and humanitarian intervention to provide a sense of stability and equity should not be denigrated; rather, it should be encouraged.

What will be the consequences, when the women who have benefited from greater access to education and social mobility are publicly shamed and summarily executed in the streets? What will happen to the non-Muslims who will be forced to withdraw their religious practices inside their homes, and the LGBT Afghanis, who have seen the bravery of Western soldiers to come out of the closet and wonder if their country will, too, accept them for who they are? What will happen when another humanitarian crisis is created as refugees stream into Pakistan, Georgia, and Iran?

The consequences have been witnessed in Afghanistan already, where the Taliban stands poised to return the country back to a false vision of patriarchal fundamentalism. The consequences have been seen in Vietnam, where those who supported the South Vietnamese regime - for all its faults, of which there were many - were sent to re-education camps.

The moment Afghanistan falls, as has Vietnam, the killings and terror unleashed upon a people to which we have yet to pay our burden back to will stagger higher than previously untold of. The recent decision to withdraw from the country is representative of an abandonment of a people brimming to the top with potential to be made closer to America's image, just as in Vietnam.