I taught “Modern Middle East” this past Spring. This morning I kept asking myself, what would I say if I had to walk back into that classroom this morning.

One of the central lessons of our semester together keeps coming back to me: without an eye for human-level, ground-up development, work across international borders is rarely successful. Today is a lesson in the disastrous nature of those who are only willing to look for top-down solutions that fit into the “first 100 days,” or worse, into neat soundbites or viral social media posts (never mind the lesson COVID-19 has given us on the destructive nature of going “viral”).

Today, the media narrative too-often implied—if not explicitly stated—that the U.S. should not have entered Afghanistan in the first place. NPR’s “Here & Now” just interviewed an Afghan man who previously served in the U.S. military as an interpreter. The host asked him if he regrets joining the Americans. He quickly and confidently responded that he had no regrets, recounting the terrible treatment his family previously encountered under the Taliban and the hope that the U.S. offered him. His words are a powerful lesson, if we are willing to listen.

If we can get past our own cynicism, then we can hear the truth: this man and his family deserve better and he knows that they do. They deserve better than the Taliban, than the systematic targeting of his family members, than the abduction of daughters, than the harassment or worse of sisters and mothers. Then, before we throw up our hands in despair, we must also admit that there are no simple top-down solutions that achieve something better. And that those who do not believe that there is something better—better than the events we are watching unfold today—should be called out for their cold inhumanity, their lies, and their violence. In so many ways, this applies to Janus-faced U.S. policy, the Afghan government, and, of course, all the more to the Taliban.

In each of my global history classes, I confront students interested in global affairs who are also profoundly skeptical that they as Americans can achieve any good in the world. Today is another blow for them. They are already so mired in an epistemology of deconstruction that anything hopeful appears to them as a mirage. They believe, as do so many others, that it is only a matter of time before the bloom falls from the rose and we’re only left with thorns. These students deserve better, too. I’m afraid that, unlike that Afghan interpreter, they don’t realize that better is out there.

I return to this central lesson: top-down planning that attempts to engineer new societies is predicated upon hubris and a profoundly flawed view of human nature. But the good defined by those would-be engineers does not have to be the only good.

To believe that there can be better does not presume that we can do it perfectly. Instead, it forces us to listen, to admit reality, call for truth, and allow for complexity. Because there is better out there, we must refuse any narrative that silences the Afghans who do not question their belief in American promises.

Today, I would tell my students, Americans should admit that we could have done better. We should have done better.

American failures expose a reality that our leaders failed to anticipate. I expect that with the maintenance of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the ongoing instability in Central Asia and the Middle East over the last ten years, today’s catastrophe will only be the beginning. I hope that I’m wrong.