Almost a moot point but I'll bite anyway
:
I think the shifting motives from our administration caused world opinion to question our ulterior motives and undermined our legitimacy. Our relegation of civilian casualties to "collateral damage" has taught soon-to-be terrorists that civilian casualties in the U.S. is an unfortunate but necessary side effect to military action--whether the fighting force is seen as legitimate by others or not. Our actions transgressed our historical standpoint of being ruled by laws and not men and calls into question whether a government can truly be administered detached from idealogies.
In short, our current actions will cause blowback. We unfortunately aren't likely to recognize the historical context once that blowback occurs and will lash out once again in the distant future instead of reexamining how we implement foreign policies.
btw, I am currently hoping the Iraqi people will elect officials before the U.S. administration gets its puppet government set up since that would both provide a self-directed government (one of the stated reasons for our actions) and expose our administration's ulterior motives if they keep undermining such attempts. Right now it appears that upstarts are occurring but there hasn't been public criticism towards our government for arresting those people. It's a hard call for me personally as to whether the upstarts are actually popular uprisings so I'm keeping those arguments to myself.