Not a bad analogy, but deficient in one respect. We didn't go into Iraq or Afghanistan to protect the people of these countries, or their neighbors, from their governments. We went in to advance our own interests. In Iraq at least I'm not entirely sure what interests we were advancing, but they were said to be terribly important ones. Something about sending a message, I guess, although what message and to whom was never clear to me. Possibly I'm just dense.

In any event, though, these interests presumably still exist, and are still important. It's not just about settling a domestic dispute. If the end state produces the same conditions that led us to intervene in the first place, we haven't accomplished much, if anything.

Not so much an issue in Iraq, but certainly an issue in Afghanistan... and it would not be particularly honest of us to treat either as an effort to settle a domestic dispute.