This Isn't Iraq… and It Ain’t Even Close
Kevin McCullough
It’s a midweek ritual. My buddy Alex and I grab a cold one at our favorite watering hole—not for wings (we’ve evolved beyond that), but for the in-house, hand-crafted potato chips. Perfectly crisp, barely salted, and paired with a black truffle aioli that, no exaggeration, makes it rain flavor in your mouth.
It’s where conversation flows as smoothly as the draft. Some nights it’s about life—two dads swapping notes on how our boys, now somehow high school sophomores, have morphed into full-grown men right in front of our eyes. Other nights, we fix the world. Or at least we yell at it loud enough to feel like we did.
Last night? The world showed up on its own. Operation Midnight Hammer. Plastered all over every screen in the place. Iran’s nuclear sites? Turned to smoking craters. Gone. Reduced to fine, sandy dust. And this was even after the usual Beltway genius brigade tried leaking the plans ahead of time.
That’s when Alex lobbed the question that every single cable news mouth-breather seems contractually obligated to ask. “Isn’t this just Iraq or Afghanistan all over again?”
Set the chips down, pal. Let’s walk through this.
This isn’t Iraq. It isn’t Afghanistan. It’s not even in the same universe. This wasn’t some tragic exercise in exporting democracy to people who didn’t want it. It wasn’t a two-decade nation-building slog through endless desert. There were no speeches about empowering women’s councils or holding parliamentary elections in caves.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2025/06/26/this-isnt-iraq-and-it-aint-even-close-n2659486
