What's also hilarious is how competent we seemed after the First Iraq War, the one from 1991 with the other George Bush. We had concrete goals that weren't nebulous or based on lies (for the most part). Saddam Hussein was actually in the wrong. He invaded a sovereign country and the entire planet condemned him for this, even the Soviet Union. Both we, the US, as well as the USSR were allies of Iraq before then. The iffy part was why we went in to stop them rather than funding a homegrown militia, but it was probably for the best considering how our other adventures in arming Middle Eastern insurgents have gone. Just like how we actually dropped the atom bombs on Japan to send a message to the Soviets in 1945, I believe we really blitzkrieged into Iraq to tell the Russians "check out how unstoppable we are compared to your commie asses. We can conquer a world-class military in a month." And then we actually backed it up and the Soviets were mortified to see how stupendously far ahead the USA was over them despite bankrupting themselves trying to achieve military parity.
Total casualties of the Gulf War were relatively low as far as wars go, especially on our side. In terms of major wars over the past 150 years, I think the Gulf War has the distinction of having the fewest American casualties by some distance.
But more importantly, we didn't uninstall Saddam Hussein. We got in, did our fucking job, and got the hell out. Hussein was weakened, embarrassed, and put in his place. There was no chance of Iraq catching up to Iran anytime soon either, so while Middle Eastern geopolitics had been radically shifted, it wasn't so radical as to plunge the entire region into perpetual war.
Alas. Nearly $6 trillion gone, well over a million dead, geopolitics fatally altered for the worse, and a generation of cynical asshats later, we can honestly look back and say "Imagine the reason Jeb! would have invaded Iraq over."