Emancipation of women wasn't the reason Afghanistan was invaded. It kind of became a sort of disingenuous revisionist justification somewhere along the line, but the stated justification at the time was the Taliban were harboring al-Qaeda, particularly bin Laden.

The whole of it seems quite farcical to me, particularly in retrospect, but I wouldn't equivocate it with Russia's invasion of Ukraine because I don't think the American government ever intended on annexing Afghanistan territory. It does however resemble the Soviet Union's own invasion of Afghanistan to topple the (then communist) government of Afghanistan. In that case there was also a fig leaf of humanitarianism, since the PDPA, lead by Taraki and Amin, were massacring civilians and generally losing control of the country. Taraki evidently got cold feet and requested a Soviet intervention, but was subsequently assassinated at Amin's order before that occurred. The assassination of Taraki and the PDPA's general inability to stop murdering people served as the Soviet justification for the invasion. Of course the reality of the invasion was not particularly humanitarian, but the same can be said of the American invasion.

Anyway, all of it was and is shameful and none of it excuses the rest of it.