AFGHANISTAN — It seems like only yesterday US troops launched their first airstrikes on Afghanistan in October 2001. Now, the war has grown up and earned its driver’s license.

The war’s proud parents — the 1979 Russian Invasion of Afghanistan and the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839 — are amazed at how time has flown for their young war, whom they call “Operation Enduring Stalemate."

“He was so innocent in those first days of 2002, just after 9/11. He was such a ‘good war,'" the parents said.

But just over a year later, the War in Afghanistan had a baby brother, the War in Iraq.