Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg talks about his brief stint in Afghanistan as if he's the next John McCain.

Although everyone should be grateful for his six months abroad as a computer guy, it's time he give up the act.

Buttigieg did a service to this country, there's no question. But to put forth his time as a key pusher who attended meetings as though it were his own Vietnam is obnoxious at the least, unseemly at the worst.

At the conclusion of the Democratic primary debate on Thursday, Buttigieg, summoning the soul of a high-school thespian, said, "Nothing about politics is theoretical for me. I've had the experience of writing a letter to my family, putting it in an envelope, marking it 'just in case,' and leaving it where they would know where to find it in case I didn’t come back from Afghanistan.”

You'd think the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was renowned for diving on top of grenades when in fact he was dragging and dropping computer documents.

The Hill in May reported that Buttigieg spent all of six months in Afghanistan, from mid-March to mid-September of 2014. He didn't even miss Christmas at home. In his time there, he “coordinated intelligence sharing and targeting deconfliction” methods across military operations.

More from the report:

[M]ilitary officials who reviewed the documents ... note that [Buttigieg] likely did not engage in direct combat, which would have earned him a Navy combat ribbon. ...



Before his deployment to Afghanistan, Buttigieg was sent to Camp McCrady outside Fort Jackson, S.C., where he trained to become a “dirt sailor,” which is military slang for “Navy personnel assigned to Army-style jobs in combat zones.”

I wouldn't diminish Buttigieg's service. But why is he acting like his six months in a tent was Part II of American Sniper?

Back in May, Buttigieg contrasted his mouse-clicking with President Trump, who never served in Vietnam due to a medical diagnosis: "I don't have a problem standing up to somebody who was, you know, working on season seven of Celebrity Apprentice when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan."

Just how many laptops were in that packed bag, Mayor Pete?

Buttigieg can brag about his six months of screen time in Afghanistan, but maybe we need a way to distinguish war heroes from "war heroes."