In refugee camps, at memorial services, in the rubble of bombed-out buildings, Syrians shared their stories, wanting to be heard. Sometimes they stopped talking during our conversations because they recognized the futility of it all. I often shared their frustration but continued reporting in order to create a record, hoping that nobody would say we didn’t know.

Syria taught me that knowledge does not lead to accountability. The families who were buried under the rubble will not get justice. Those who had to start over in foreign lands and were vilified for having the temerity to want to raise their children in safety won’t either. Neither will those who drowned on the way to European shores, nor will those who were besieged and starved to within an inch of their life get justice.

The parents whose children killed by sarin gas appeared covered in small, white shrouds on newspaper front pages won’t either. And justice will remain elusive for the mother whose feet bled searching for news of her son in the dungeons of Syria’s security services. Many Syrians I spoke to often wondered why the world did nothing to help them, why the West — a substitute term for the United States — stopped at offering mere words, why every act of horror evoked mere outrage and posturing at the United Nations Security Council.

Americans often have little awareness of just how pervasive their country and way of life is in the Middle East. An activist in Raqqa described to me living under the Islamic State rule by referencing the American television series “The Blacklist” to explain how humans adapt to criminality.

Many lives have been changed, upended or destroyed by the direct or indirect reach of the United States, whether they were Yazidis saved by the United States’ intervention in Iraq, or were buried under the rubble by the American-led coalition’s airstrikes in Mosul and Raqqa.

The story many Americans believe in and propagate about their country is one molded in the Cold War ethos of spreading liberalism and freedom, a story that people in desperate straits sometimes clung to. After the 2013 chemical attack by Mr. Assad’s regime in Syria, which killed over a thousand civilians, many Syrians hoped the United States would enforce President Barack Obama’s red line. Even later, in 2016, Aleppo vainly waited for American help that never came.

The prolongation of the war led to the rise of extremist groups the United States is now fighting in Syria. When Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, came under siege this year, the Syrians were no longer waiting for the world to help.