My country was invaded by terrorists on September 11th, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. We waged war on the entire region the terrorists came from, eventually killing the leader of the group, and nothing changed. All our bombing did nothing, all our sacrifices of innocent people were for naught.
Amazingly, killing a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the terrorists that attacked your country is a bad move, and only serves to create more terrorists as people watch their loved ones die by your hand and grow to hate you.
If your takeaway from America's terrible actions post-9/11 is that we should've been even more brutal and wiped out the entire mostly-innocent population of the middle east, you've got the wrong takeaway.