It’s become a trope as common as it is stupid. The Daily Mail titled a recent article describing violent protests in Portland, Oregon, with the quote, “It looks like downtown Baghdad.” An alternative Miami paper made the same analogy to describe street violence there, but there is no partisan monopoly on the Baghdad-bashing. Fox News talking head Maria Bartiromo also used the comparison. Football coach Tommy Tuberville, now the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, described Lubbock, Texas, as essentially Iraq, as did Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri, when talking about Ferguson. When construction tore apart Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Cubs pitcher Jason Hammel likewise quipped, “It looks like Baghdad.” It was the same thing after asbestos remediation in an Oakland, California, mall. Other newspapers have used the quote to describe everything from hurricane damage to fires.

President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was deeply polarizing. When U.S. forces and their allies got bogged down in insurgency, many politicians who initially supported Saddam Hussein’s ouster flip-flopped. Speaking to a university audience in West Virginia, then-Sen. John Kerry famously explained that he voted to authorize funds for the Iraq War before he voted against it. Especially among Democrats, but also among Republicans, a past vote, let alone sustained support for the Iraq War, is seen as a disqualifying original sin.