Trump repeats the mistakes of Afghanistan: Why are we funding the enemy, again?

Global oil supplies have been choked by Iranian forces closing down the Strait of Hormuz in response to President Trump’s war of choice in Iran. And so to increase oil supply and bring down the cost of gas, the Trump administration suspended tariffs on Iranian oil.  

But if this conflict with Iran isn’t worth enduring $5 gas, then it’s not a war worth fighting.  

In 2014, I was a young platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan. Our infantry unit was deployed to Kandahar to secure the region and assist our Afghan counterparts in their fight against the Taliban. American forces had already withdrawn from our outposts in the hinterlands, and coalition forces were consolidated at large bases in anticipation of our planned withdrawal from Afghanistan. (Spoiler alert: We did not end up withdrawing then).  

In southern Afghanistan, most of our supplies were trucked in from Pakistan by contracted Afghan truckers. The journey from Pakistan through the heartland of the Taliban to Kandahar was treacherous. The trucks carrying our needed supplies were subject to frequent ambushes.

A congressional investigation found that because “the cost of private security [was] exceptionally high,” trucking companies instead resorted to paying bribes or “protection payments” to would-be attackers. “The operational environment in Afghanistan,” the report explained, “require[d] payoffs to local warlords and the Taliban for safe passage of trucking convoys.” 

You read that right — the truckers bringing the supplies we needed to fight the Taliban were paying bribes to the Taliban, the same organization we were fighting. Imagine how it felt to learn that.

Afghanistan should have been a lesson. Instead, here we are again. 

In 2018, Trump criticized his predecessor for lifting sanctions against Iran, giving “a lifeline of cash to a murderous dictatorship that has continued to spread bloodshed, violence, and chaos. … The regime has used the windfall of newly accessible funds,” he said, “to build nuclear-capable missiles, fund terrorism, and fuel conflict across the Middle East and beyond.”  

But now, after his own war against Iran has become politically toxic — a war for which we still have been given no consistent reason, justification or end-state — the president is allowing Iran to sell oil. Iran, the same country we are at war with, will now use that money to buy the missiles and drones it needs to strike our service members. 

It was asinine to fund our enemy in Afghanistan and it is asinine now. In at least one sense, it is even worse now. We didn’t directly choose to fund the Taliban back then — unaccountable contractors did. This time? The one making the choice is the commander in chief of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines ha has put into harm’s way. 

You can’t effectively fight a war when you are funding the enemy. If Iran is truly a national security threat serious enough to justify military action, then let’s act like it and keep the sanctions in place. Wars should demand sacrifice — not only from the men and women actively fighting, but also from the people and politicians back home who send them to the battlefield. 

I often felt a cognitive dissonance when speaking with my wife or mom on the phone after getting back from a hairy patrol. While we were out dodging IEDs, the headlines back home were focused on a parallel world of midterm elections and cyberattacks in Hollywood. Outside of my family and friends, it felt like no one back home remembered we were “over there,” wondering if we’d make it home alive.  

I often joked that there should be a tax any time the American military was deployed to a conflict — that way, Congress couldn’t get away with indefinitely having troops deployed to forgotten forever wars without people noticing they were paying for it. My thought wasn’t to punish Americans, of course. It was to force our country to choose: either the war is worth fighting and we accept the cost, or it’s not and we bring our troops home.  

Wars are won by nations willing to match their commitment to their objectives. If we are willing to fund our enemy rather than of accept $5 gas back home, then we are admitting that this war isn’t worth winning — and we have no business sending our troops to fight it. 

Micah Ables is a writer and former active-duty U.S. Army infantry officer who served in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe.