HARRISON HAMM, Opinion Editor—
There was a lot that was troubling about the United States’s frantic withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban took over again, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions in the country and reintroducing barbaric punishments and harsh restrictions on liberty.
But from the American perspective, we focused on what it meant for us: the fates of Americans in Afghanistan and our definitive loss in the war.
We have a tendency to overlook anything other than American lives in these scenarios. As Ali Imran ‘24 wrote last week in this space, an incomprehensible number died as a result of this war, and many more were displaced. The US government, in its zero-sum pursuit of superiority and shows of strength, has taken too many unnecessary actions that have killed civilians and increased the cost of war. We as Americans have been conditioned to focus entirely on the American effort — the troops that we lost. Of course, those deaths are tragic. But they pale in comparison to the many noncombatants that Americans killed and injured, often with nameless drone strikes and bombs. Per AP, the official Afghan civilian death count is nearly 50,000. Over 2,000 American troops died.
It is too easy to forget sometimes that America’s actions are everything for that region. They are the ones losing their homes and seeing their country bombarded with war. We are distant, able to move on with our lives. We have the luxury of looking away from what the US government is doing. That’s why I am thinking twice about the ethnocentric approach that we get to take with these wars. Too often, we don’t think about the effects that have been felt by the victims: the ordinary people of the countries the US invades.