Twenty-five years ago my family and I were taking shelter in the so-called “sealed room” in our home just west of Jerusalem. So did the dogs, who quickly caught on and knew the routine as well as any of us. Outside, the Middle East was witnessing the largest conventional war fought anywhere in the world since 1945.

It all started in July 1990 when the then US ambassador in Baghdad, April Glaspie, gave Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein the go ahead in Kuwait. Or so, at any rate, he understood whatever it was that she had told him. Such misunderstandings are by no means uncommon in history. Think, for example, of the British failure to warn Germany in 1914 that any invasion of Belgium would lead to war between the two countries. Or of Hitler’s failure to understand that, in guaranteeing the integrity of Poland against outside aggression. Britain and France, after years of appeasement, were finally getting serious. Or of Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser failing to grasp Israel’s intentions after he had remilitarized the Sinai Peninsula and closed the Straits of Tiran back in May 1967.

To repeat, the outcome was the largest conventional war since 1945. On one side was the Iraqi Army. Quantitatively it was very impressive force; some estimates put the total number of troops at Saddam’s disposal at over a million. If true, that would have made them the fifth largest on earth, right behind the USSR (which, to remind those of you who have forgotten, was still intact), the US, China, and India. Against them were arrayed almost a million men (and, yes, for God’s sake, a few women too) of various nations of whom the US accounted for about seventy percent.

As it turned out, Saddam’s forces were no match for their opponents. First, the Coalition used its overwhelming advantage in the air to knock out Iraq’s airfields, communication system, and anti-aircraft defenses. Next it went on to pulverize much of its infrastructure, and paralyze or smash its armed forces. Finally, even as the US Marines mounted a diversionary attack on Kuwait, General Schwarzkopf launched a massive ground operation (“Hail Mary”), outflanking the Iraqi army from the west and forcing it to withdraw. The entire ground campaign only lasted 96 hours and cost the Coalition very few casualties. At that point President Bush, Sr., declared the objective had been achieved and forced the Iraqis to sue for terms.

No sooner had the war ended than post-action analysis got under way. In Washington DC, in London, in Paris, in Tel Aviv, and—it is said—in Damascus as well, what impressed most observers was the new technologies the Americans put to use. Including satellite reconnaissance, JSTARS (Joint Surveillance and Target Attack System), stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, anti-missile defenses (which proved more or less useless), the most powerful tanks ever deployed on a battlefield, and the vast command, control, and communications network in history up to that point. For a number of years there was much talk about “lifting the fog of war” and a “revolution in military affairs.” Even a historical transition from war to something known as “hyperwar.” New technology, it was claimed, would cause future wars to look like the last one. Get in, fire your load, and get out; easily, smoothly, and with very few casualties.

Following the defeat in Vietnam, America had become cautious and reluctant to go to war. Now its leaders, both civilian and military, were overtaken by hubris. They claimed, and no doubt sincerely believed, that theirs were the best trained, best organized, best equipped and best led forces in history. What they forgot was that the forces in question had been used against a conventional army; albeit one that was vastly inferior, qualitatively speaking.

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Nemesis was quick to assert itself. I well remember how, early in 1993, I was sitting in the office of a senior US Marine Corps general. As we discussed the forthcoming operation in Somalia, I told him that, in my opinion, it there would be difficult to carry out and might very well end in failure. In response he looked at me as if I were a Neanderthal who had escaped from some museum. When the campaign began it proved to all the world the utter inability of the US, by then the world’s sole remaining Superpower, to impose its will on some ill-fed (they were actually known as “Skinnies”), ill-clad, ill-trained, ill-equipped, ill-everything, local militias.

In 2001 the invasion of Afghanistan brought those with eyes to see a similar lesson. To no avail. Ignoring both the facts and the critics who pointed them out, two years later President Bush Jr. ordered his forces into Iraq. The ensuing campaign turned out to be anything but quick and easy. Instead it led to a long war that resulted in over 4,000 American dead a well as tens of thousands injured, many of them very badly. All without producing anything remotely resembling a victory.

In 1991, President Bush Sr.’s decision not to pursue the fleeing Iraqis 500 kilometers to Baghdad and topple Saddam gave rise to much criticism. Now it turned out that, compared to his son who did go to Baghdad and did topple Saddam, the elder Bush had been a pure genius. So bad was the defeat that, when trouble broke out in Libya and Syria in 2011, neither the US nor any of its allies any longer had what it takes to send in any ground forces at all.

In 1991, twenty-five years ago, the Americans and their allies knew where to stop. In 2003 they did not. Overconfident and blind to their own limitations, they opened the gates of hell, unleashing thousands upon thousands of devils inside.

Now, unfortunately, it is the turn of the rest of the world to be Saddamized.