Agreed. But America is still an idea. Many other countries have massacred their indigenous population. Many other countries have enslaved people. Many other countries have fought unjust wars. There's a lot America has to be ashamed of.

And yet America is still a great idea. That's what gives us accountability. That's why we can't retreat from the world into isolationism.

[edit] Just to expand on this, I'm from the immigrant side of America, and the working class side. In other words, I'm not a rich white guy whose family sailed here on the Mayflower, and I'm not someone with "white privilege" or whatever. This is the place you go if you have something you want to build, make, say, do, create, or a freedom you wish to exercise that you cannot exercise in your home country. Now. A lot of old-school right wing Americans think they don't want more immigrants. But without immigrants, America is nothing. The force of change and justice and creative power in America, in my mind, has always been about immigration and the freedom it unleashes in people who were repressed elsewhere in the world. And that is why we have a responsibility to help people, like the people in Kabul right now, who are being crushed by horrific violent forces like the Taliban.

Simplified, there are several groups of people in the United States: immigrants, people that forgot they once were immigrants themselves that want to close the door on others now that they have theirs, people and their descendants that were brought there against their will and Native Americans.

All of these groups have their own idea of what America should stand for and their lack of agreement is materializing in a societal schism that I don't believe can be bridged under a single political system.

And yes, America has a responsibility to Afghanistan, but mostly because they are one of the major forces behind the current mess in the first place.