Brett McGurk is a CNN global affairs analyst who served in senior national security positions under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.NOTE: A version of this column ran in November 2025.
Now that the United States has taken decisive action to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the inevitable comparisons are already flying. Critics are invoking Iraq. Supporters are pointing to Panama.
Both analogies are tempting — though one is more apt than the other.
More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.
What has our country gotten itself into?
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