Not sure what your point is, are you saying the gulf war was a rational, justified or proportional reaction to a 2 day regional conflict where about 700 people died?
It was an action we baited Saddam into by telling him we would not respond to his invasion, knowing full well we would. We lied to enable him a false sense of security that he could invade Kuwait without repercussions because he had been too successful at establishing socialism after we put him in power.
So when he did invade, thinking we'd said that'd be fine with us, we demonized him widely for it and came to Kuwait's rescue. Had we been honest, we'd have told him that we'd obviously not support a major economic ally being invaded just because he wanted more sources of oil and strategic access to a larger ocean port. In a lot of ways, he still thought of us as a friendly nation until we revealed our actual intent was to bait him into a diplomatic mis-step, which was also much the same as what we did when we told him to go ahead and use biowarfare on his border with Iran that we then called him despicable for since the gas harmed many of his own on his side.
As for whether it was a rational, justified or proportional reaction... I suppose if you're going to go to war, IMO, NEVER do it half-assed. There is no excuse for not getting in and getting it done at top speed so I'm a rather large supporter of shock and awe and overwhelming display of force. The justification is either there or it isn't, and in a modern world, obviously invasion should never be ok so yes, it was justified to liberate a sovereign nation that was unjustly invaded. What wasn't justified was that we said we'd ignore it if he did. To add to the justification was that for the most part, no previous war had been waged with such precision to minimize casualties and we took in hoards of surrendering units peacefully, as difficult as it was to logistically manage so many mass surrenders.
The 2nd invasion was just horsecrap given the WMD arguments that were obviously on very unstable grounds to begin with, though it did put to the whole thing to bed finally. It really played out as a second almost random response to 9/11 and was publicly supported by basically demonizing the whole Islamic world to Americans that just fear the whole religion and its rise as if its a megalithic threat as a whole.
Strategic ambiguity did that without making China consider the option of invading Taiwan. The departure from strategic ambiguity is the only reason why China is considering a military solution as they cannot accept Taiwan becoming an unsinkable airforce carrier for the US armed forces which are already surrounding China to a -in their view- worrying degree. China showed no sign to consider military solutions to the Taiwan question until the US started to assert its military presence there post 2016, until the US made it clear that their ambition for Taiwan were to abandon their one china policy and support their sovereignty openly with the goal of making it yet another military ally of the US close to China. On the contrary the relation between China and Taiwan was at an historic high in 2015. US escalation is the reason why China is considering a military option, not the other way around. That's my view on the matter, it's of course ok to disagree, I just want to voice my perspective as its a perspective that imo is too hastily ignored/dismissed in the western echo-chambers, and I think it's important that it is part of the discussion.
It's of course going to be a universal truth that when one sees a potential threat and begins to respond with a deterrence presence buildup, particularly when such a threat has never been publicly stated, the offense to the trust that has existed can create distrust and a hostile environment where perhaps one never was warranted. However, the question is, is it better to be ready for the possibility of a danger from a player with an excellent poker face, or to act in good faith only to be shown that good faith was being instead foolish later when the lack of preparation for a potential threat is revealed by the threat manifesting anyhow? Again, I believe had China not unjustly invaded Taiwan, we'd have operated on more of a grounds of trust, particularly being that we had done for them against Japan much the same as we did for France against Germany in WWII. There should never have been mistrust to begin with but after Vietnam, NK, Taiwan and such, it has been a very wavering will to try to work with a rival nation that seems to clearly understand or see us as a rival as well, rather than just a stout trade ally. We have a complex relationship or we would hardly have any feeling for the need for militaries between us. There's an ongoing sense they simply wait for any sign of weakness to exploit and if they really felt they had the upper hand, they'd act on it. I can understand the perspective of not wanting our military position in Taiwan to exist. The thing is, true peace never really exists in an un-unified unglobalized world.
