We all watched in utter dismay as the Taliban gained power in Afghanistan—all in a matter of days—undoing 20 years of diplomatic, financial, educational and military investment. Investment is too callous a term when considering the human cost of this nation-building effort—the long, long list of young servicemen and women who were killed in that field of conflict. In Iran, recently Ebrahim Raisi, a murderous human rights abuser, who made religious minorities a prime target while chief of the judiciary, was inaugurated as president of the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, Lebanon, a comparative haven of religio-social harmony in the Middle East and host to vast quantities of refugees, continues to descend toward political and economic catastrophe.