In 2017, I arrived at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport as part of a congressional staff delegation. Even though the U.S. embassy stood a mere four miles away, safety concerns necessitated our helicoptering from a recently constructed multimillion-dollar transit facility instead of traveling by road.

There has been intense hand-wringing about how a handful of Democratic members of Congress last week caused a delay on a vote to suspend the debt ceiling and fund the government because the original bill included funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system for Israel.