The First War was justified by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and threat to block the Straits of Hormuz. Bush I was able to get world (and Muslim) help, and he stopped as soon as our mission of frustrating Saddam's ambition was achieved. The attack on Afghanistan by Bush II was also fully justified, the Taliban were sheltering and protecting Al-Quaeda, which had waged war on us on 9/11/01. No one in the world blamed us for that.

But the Second Gulf war was designed to intimidate the Muslim world by demonstrating to them we could easily defeat their most powerful military and occupy any Muslim capital we wanted whenever we wanted. Intimidation through terror. Bush actually believed that "clash of civilizations" nonsense, and he acted accordingly. Bin Ladin may have believed it too, but the Muslim world didn't. But they are starting to believe it now.

We immediately achieved a stranglehold on the world's oil supply, by ensuring our access to Iraqi oil and controlling its flow by sea from the Gulf States, including Iran. And we threatened to make Iraq's oil wealth pay for the costs of our invasion and occupation forces.

It also was designed to place a puppet government in Baghdad and an American army there (easily supplied by sea) which would be in a position to invade all the bordering countries, to attack any troublemakers or prop up any of our allies. Terror through intimidation.

Look at the map. We were across the border from Iran, Saudi, the Emirates, Turkey, Jordan and Syria. And with our troops in Afghanistan, we had Iran surrounded on two sides. We didn't fly airliners into their office buildings, we bombed them with marked planes.

We attacked Iraq on the phony pretext of WMDs, and that they masterminded 9/11, but we really did it for purely strategic and economic reasons. Just because our troops were wearing uniforms and flying Old Glory doesn't mean it wasn't designed to use force and terror to achieve our political objectives. And isn't that the very dictionary definition of terrorism?

The fact that Saddam was a bloodthirsty tyrant hated by his own people and his neighbors was true, but it was also irrelevant. That's not why we took him out. The world is full of bloodthirsty tyrants, and some of them are on our payroll. We did it for our own convenience and profit. Everybody who lives in that part of the world, even those who hated and feared Saddam, knew that and immediately knew we couldn't be trusted either. THAT's why they hate us.

The fact that none of those strategic and military objectives were achieved, and that it created a collapse of stability and a vacuum of leadership leading to total chaos in the region, is something else again. Even those states in the region that benefited from our action, even helped us, now know the USA is capable of invading a country on the other side of the world simply for its own gain. They don't trust us. Just because we call it "shock and awe" doesn't mean its not naked imperialism, aggression, and terrorism.

The sad thing is that when the dust clears, the biggest loser of the Second Gulf War will be shown to be the United States of America. It marked the high water mark of American power, the beginning of the decline of American influence, the loss of our moral authority, the end of the American Century, and a view of America as a stereotypical imperialist power which will long persist, no matter how we conduct ourselves in the future.

Yeah, we were terrorists. The whole world knows we're capable of that now, that we're no better than the 19th century Europeans, the 20th century Germans, or the 21st century Russians. The whole world knows this, except for a handful of deluded fools who can't bring themselves to admit a tragic mistake because it might reflect poorly on their side in a petty domestic political squabble about budgets, taxes, and health insurance policy.