One More Way the Iraq War Has Made Us Weaker

I've been thinking this same thing for some time but Ezra says it best:

Assume that before the invasion, there were three main ways for America to
deal with a foreign policy crisis. The first was diplomacy, encompassing
incentives and sanctions. The third was military options, everything from
surgical strikes to full-out invasion. The second, which was the middle way, was
the threat of military options. So long as others feared our might, we could
posture, make aggressive noises, begin public build-ups, even deploy out to
borders, in the hopes that fear of our strength would force capitulation. It was
a stronger and more dangerous path than simple diplomacy, but it didn't commit
us to a war and occupation. This, by the way, was working well in Iraq, but it
turned out that Bush wasn't really interested in having inspectors enter the
country and it was all a ruse leading to invasion.

Post-Iraq, option number two no longer exists. Not only have we proven
ourselves barely capable of invading an extremely weak country, we've also tied
up our troops, exhausted our forces, and busted our deficit doing it. In this
climate, anything that looks like a feint will be judged a feint, the costs of
another invasion are simply too high for most nations to believe we'd try again.
Losing that option, then, makes war more, not less, likely. If North Korea or
Iran make a move that's beyond the pale, we no longer have the ability to
threaten war. That means, if diplomacy and sanctions fail, that our only option
is actually going to war.

Indeed.