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.

It was targeted. Surgical. The mission was simple: identify the most dangerous, real-world threat to global stability—Iran’s nuclear weapons program—and end it. Not debate it. Not sanction it. Not hold hands at some U.N. wine mixer about it. End it.

Fourteen. Not six. Fourteen GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators—each weighing 30,000 pounds—delivered with mechanical, merciless precision. The most devastating bunker buster ever created, designed to burrow deep underground and vaporize hardened nuclear infrastructure. The message wasn’t subtle.

No boots on the ground. No occupation. No ridiculous Pentagon PowerPoint slides about “hearts and minds.” Just boom. Dust. Silence.

And let’s be absolutely clear. This wasn’t Iraq with grainy satellite photos of trucks that may or may not have been hauling chemical weapons. Iran’s nuclear weapons program was not a theory. It wasn’t a maybe. The centrifuges were real. The uranium was enriched. And the threat wasn’t whispered in back rooms—it was broadcast from the steps of mosques and paraded in government-sponsored rallies where the slogans all translated to “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

Diplomacy? Oh, we tried that. For decades. Iran took the money, nodded politely, then went right back to spinning centrifuges in facilities buried so deep it would take a miracle—or fourteen bunker busters—to reach them. This wasn’t speculative. This was a countdown clock. The only question was whether we were going to sit there and watch it hit zero.

No regime change. No American kids slogging through alleyways while some cleric with a burner phone decides whether he’s going to just hate us or hate us more that day. We didn’t try to topple Tehran. We didn’t try to install a democracy. We didn’t stick around long enough to open a Starbucks.

It was this simple: Find the nuke. End the nuke. Go home.

Even with some Ivy League desk jockey in Washington leaking the plans—probably between sips of an oat milk latte and retweeting some garbage about climate equity—it still worked. Iran’s nuclear timeline? Set back years. Plural. Their most secure sites? Rubble. Their top nuclear scientists? Probably Googling “entry-level HVAC certifications” right about now.

This wasn’t escalation. It was extermination. A rat trap for rogue states. A message delivered in fourteen consecutive 30,000-pound reminders: Don’t. Just don’t.

And let’s not kid ourselves—this does not happen under Biden. Or Obama. Under their watch, Iran got pallets of cash and a nuke deal written in crayon that basically read “Don’t do bad stuff. Pretty please.” And then Iran did the bad stuff anyway while CNN clapped like seals.

Trump—back in office and already giving the global swamp night sweats—saw the threat. Assessed it. Pulled the trigger. No dithering. No “international consensus.” No waiting around for Brussels to finish their croissants and weigh in.

Just decisive action. The kind of action that actually changes the world instead of talking it to death. The world is safer today because of it, whether the State Department wants to admit it or not.

And right on cue, here comes Antony Blinken wringing his hands like some anxious high school principal. “We oppose this reckless action... but, uh… we hope it worked.” Yes, Tony. Thanks for that. Your input will be noted and promptly filed in the appropriate circular bin.

Meanwhile, 74 percent of the American people supported the strike. Because regular Americans actually understand the difference between starting a war and finishing a threat.

This is how it should be done. No more 20-year babysitting assignments in countries that don’t want us there. No more trillion-dollar sinkholes trying to turn goat herders into Girl Scouts. No more watching soldiers die while Washington hosts symposiums about “exit strategies.”

You hit the threat. You crater it. You make the rubble bounce. Then you clock out. Simple. Effective. Done.
Alex, for now, agreed to disagree. Fair enough. The delineations are crystal clear. And we both knew that come Saturday, it’s time to set politics aside anyway. Because those overgrown sophomore boys of ours are about to learn—again—that their dads can still absolutely school them all across our favorite golf course.

Game on.

Kevin McCullough is the host of That KEVIN Show, airing weekends on the Salem News Channel, BizTV, and syndicated on the Salem Radio Network. He’s a syndicated columnist with Townhall.com, a political commentator, and the author of multiple bestsellers. Follow him on X, Instagram, GETTR, Truth Social, and Threads @ThatKevinShow.