It was a utopian regional strategy. Take out Saddam, create a democracy in its place, which will become a City on the Hill to all the Middle East, and democracy sweeps across the region. The only flaw with the plan: Muslims are not capable of making democracy work.
--The only flaw with the plan: Muslims are not capable of making democracy work.--
Turkey and most of Kurdistan have shown otherwise. It's a matter of degree, and is obviously dependent on the level of violence that is allowed to flourish with impunity.
Regardless, in history there are tipping points beyond which the energy to achieve the same goal increases very rapidly. The proper time to remove Saddam was between late 1991 and 1999. With more efforts toward coups d'etat and using forces like the Peshmerga, that could have been achieved with far less military force.
The GHWB and Clinton admins. both proved incapable of rising to the occasion. The UN sanctions regime was bound to collapse. The rise of the Neoconservatives was facilitated by frustration with WH inaction (a White House in which Arafat slept more times than any other foreign "leader").
If you really want an example of how America's enemies can be emboldened, look at Operation Desert Fox. It was quite successful but was inexplicably called off after four days. Once you start a major operation, calling it off for no reason is an awful signal of confusion at the top.
This was tragically repeated in the sieges of Fallujah; the U.S. got it right the third time, in the most underreported and most brilliant example of urban warfare since WWII.
Bush II was thus left to pick up a metastasizing mound of trash. Another huge blunder was the "New Tone" practice of leaving too many Clinton holdovers in the State Dept. and various intelligence bureaucracies (quite an oxymoron there). Bremer should never have been allowed within 3000 miles of the Mideast.
In summary, IMHO the reason we are where we are today is
"too many Powells, not enough Wolfowitzes", and not the reverse.