Four years and 24 days. Nineteen days. There’s a huge difference between those two numbers. The first numbers, 1,485 days altogether, are the length of time since Russian troops crossed the Ukraine border on Feb. 22, 2022, and headed for Kyiv. The second number, just 19 days, is the number of days since U.S. and Israeli forces on Feb. 28 began bombing strategic targets in Iran. 

The two attacks have this in common: their initial responses were far different from what many experts, in the United States and beyond, expected and predicted.