More reasons this war is stupid (like we need 'em)

So thanks to James Wolcott's blog, I found this piece on Antiwar.com. It's of course worth reading in its entirety,  but there's one point in there that I don't think gets made enough.

Patrick Cockburn writes:

America blithely invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein to show its great political and military strength. Instead it demonstrated its weakness. The vastly expensive U.S. war machine failed to defeat a limited number of Sunni Arab guerrillas.

Now, when I hear arguments against this war, they're usually moral ones, which should be enough. Political arguments usually focus on our loss of credibility, the squandering of resources, the shattering of alliances, the creation of new terrorists, etc. These should also be enough. Somehow, they're not enough to prevent a still-pretty-large minority to shudder and mewl from under their blankets that "we're taking the fight to the terraists" and blah blah blah.
Forgive me if I don't get out enough, but I don't hear many antiwar arguments phrased in the manner above, to wit: If you were a budding terraist, would you look at the U.S. escapade in Iraq 2003-2007 and say "Whoa - we better not mess with those guys"?
It dovetails with a lot of other arguments, I know, but of all the failed, stupid reasons for this invasion, on that seems to have survived (relatively) is that all the Bad Guys are on notice that we can and will kick ass, and we're a bunch of crazy mofos who are so pissed off that we don't even care if you're exactly the right buncha guys, so if you're innocent you better turn in the Bad Guys to our mighty sword of justice. And I think our Congressmen and presidential candidates might want to bring up the fact that this war has even failed on its own terms.
Mebbe I'm stating the obvious; if so, I apologize and consider this an overworded link to a good story.