This photo was sent to me last night. Snapped by a bystander, an anguished mother holds the head of her brutalized son. Their faces are masked for their protection. Taliban fighters beat this young man with vicious strokes from gun stocks and switches, and struck and kicked him about the head. His sin? One of his relatives worked for the Americans many years ago. Unable to locate the family member, the Taliban instead assaulted the closest kin they could find:

It is right and proper that we honor the heroism witnessed on September 11, 2001. The firefighters who disregarded their own safety and drove themselves up dozens of flights of stairs, the passengers on Flight 93, the fighter pilots who took off knowing they might need to slam their F-16s into a hijacked aircraft, the thousands of U.S. military who fought and died in the wars that followed – the list is long, and it is well and proper that our thanks be even longer.

But in our hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan – perhaps the most cynical display of national treachery I have witnessed in my lifetime – we left behind multitudes of innocent Afghans who trusted America, who worked with Americans, who risked their lives as interpreters assigned to U.S. rifle companies, who braved the Taliban by teaching little girls how to read, and who were betrayed.

We gave them our word and we broke it. To this day, no one has apologized to them. Few have offered to help. The president still claims his evacuation was a success, if and when he talks about Afghanistan at all.

There is one small way that we can salvage a shred of the national honor that America lost when we so hastily jettisoned this country and deserted those poor people. Multiple attempts have been made by Congress to pass new visa authorities, along with rigorous vetting regimens, for those left behind and stranded. There is a gridlock, but gridlock is a common characteristic of deliberative bodies. The problem is a solvable one, and the task before Congress is not complicated.

The State Department broke down and ceased to perform its most basic duties during the collapse and the ensuing two years. That rot is so deep that it requires an act of Congress to fix. More visas must be authorized and better screening procedures must be implemented, as Afghanistan is once against a terrorist state.

There is bipartisan support for these proposals. Senators Roger Wicker, Tom Cotton, Amy Klobuchar, and Jeanne Shaheen earn accolades for taking the lead on negotiations. The enemy here is not Republicans or even Democrats, but the cruel tyranny of time. If Congress, paralyzed by a looming shutdown, cannot pass something in an end-of-year omnibus, the legislative clock will reset. That is another year of beatings, suffering, brutality, and extrajudicial murder that will be endured by those who trusted America and were savaged for their faith in our nation.

The 20-year war in Afghanistan represented the best of the American people and the absolute worst of American leadership. This national dishonor will be borne by our children and our children’s children. There are still ways to atone for our sins. But the clock is ticking.