Wartime atrocities always present a publicity problem for the offending country, in addition to being examples of humanitarian problems. The American experience in Afghanistan has, so far this year, been just as challenging as any other war.

As the conflict enters its 10th year, some of our forces have been found to have inflicted such offenses as urinating on the bodies of dead Afghans, inadvertently disposing of copies of the Quran by burning it and, most recently, one lone soldier allegedly killing 16 Afghan civilians in what has been described as a massacre or a rampage.

Such events are nothing new; each and every war involves damage to property, civilians and the fragile fabric of humanity. What is new in the 21st century is how quickly such news can spread and the speed with which outrage can turn into protests. Following the accidental Quran burning, for instance, thousands of Afghans protested across the country for several days. In those protests, about a dozen people died and many more were injured.

The lesson from the recent unsettling of relations between Afghanistan and the United States may be that, at this point, we are doing it wrong. It is well and good to say that if we are going to be on a mission to a country, especially one as different from our own as Afghanistan is, that we should do it right. But what does that look like?

More than 100,000 United States military personnel are deployed in the combat zone that is Afghanistan. Nation-building, however, requires more than military deployment. Granted, it is not as if the United States is not involved with enterprises such as road and school construction or farm subsidies so Afghans can profitably avoid growing crops for an illegal drug trade.

As long as the U.S. military is the point-man for American involvement in Afghanistan, however, it is the use of hard power — force — that will capture public attention. The predominant effort, if we are to be at all present in that foreign country, should consist even more of soft power missions than it already does. The politicians and critics are correct; an American mission in Afghanistan needs to be supported to the fullest extent possible.

It is the form of that mission — are we to provide humanitarian relief and infrastructure development, or are we there on a policing mission? — that we quibble with here. For years now, leaders in the defense community have advocated pursuit of a more holistic approach to our efforts there. The recognition that a “whole-of-government,” soft power approach is necessary has been recognized by figures from President Barack Obama on down. We have only to implement it.