If you want to know who to blame for the humanitarian situation unfolding in Afghanistan, well, there's not a single person--but there is a sentiment that is common all over the world that lies at the root of it: nationalism. The idea that a people own a territory and can or should exclude others. It is a sentiment that is present in every country that receives migrants.
This sentiment manifests itself into a series of laws that function like a giant Berlin wall surrounding every troubled country, trapping people inside when they desperately want to flee.
As an American, the world is open to me, thanks to my blue passport. But if I were born in a less fortunate place, my passport would be worth very little--and I'd need to ask special permission to enter most countries--which results, essentially, in the requirement for the most unfortunate of the world's people to ask permission before leaving theirs.
These nationalistic sentiments are why bureaucrats twice denied Anne Frank a visa to come to the United States. Those visa rejections, which should be regarded by the USA as a shameful act of indifference, were death warrants.
Tens of thousands of people are about to be murdered in Afghanistan. The USA will evacuate some--up to a point. But it won't even scratch the surface of the number of people who are at risk.
Why are most of these people there? Why didn't they take a commercial flight out of the country prior to the Taliban seizing power? Because they couldn't get visas. Because politicians were pressured by public sentiment into erecting Berlin Walls of Bureaucrats around nearly every country in the world. Those visa rejections are death warrants.
The USA should keep evacuating people from Afghanistan--as many as possible for as long as possible--but that won't fix the underlying problem. Until we disabuse ourselves of the notion that human beings have different rights based on the place they were born, this kind of thing will keep happening, over and over again, all over the world.
The right to flee tyranny, disaster and oppression is the greatest human rights issue of our time. Until nations all over the world recognize that human beings should be free to travel and migrate as they please, all of the other atrocities visited on the world's most vulnerable people will keep getting magnified by these Berlin Walls of Bureaucrats.