This will go down as a venge­ful affair marked by errors in judge­ment. The war against Al Qaeda has trans­formed into a project to recon­struct a state and sta­bi­lize one of the most com­plex regions on the planet. This war is going to accen­tu­ate the rel­a­tive decline of the United States, par­tic­u­larly in the eyes of the Muslim pop­u­la­tions. It will be sim­i­lar to the effect that the aborted mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Suez had on the pub­lic image of France and Great Britain in 1956. — Sir Sherard Cowper-​Coles

I hope he is wrong. I fear he is correct.