“What is at stake is the survival of millions,” Saad Mohseni, the chief executive of Moby Group, Afghanistan’s largest media organization, warns in an email. “The tsunami of crises that Afghanistan is currently facing can claim more lives than the two decades of war,” in which the United States sought to vanquish the Taliban and failed.

Biden administration officials say the Treasury Department is preparing to announce an expansion of licenses for trade with Afghanistan that will make it easier to send humanitarian assistance there. But Treasury sanctions aren’t being lifted. That means the squeeze will continue for Afghanistan’s central bank and commercial banks that have been unable to provide the liquidity the country needs. The Treasury’s licensing move is good, but more should be done — and too much time has been wasted as Afghanistan heads toward disaster.

Helping the Afghan people (but not the Taliban) should have been a no-brainer weeks ago. The fact that it has taken so long illustrates an unfortunate quality about the Biden administration: Too often, policy is reactive; it’s made with a closer focus on likely political reaction than on what’s happening on the ground. The Biden team sometimes seems to care more about the optics of policy than about the substance.