I can understand why you'd like to keep a laissez faire foreign policy & I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing keeping away from trouble. Sometimes dictators need to be put back in their box - Saddam invaded Kuwait for their oil and because he was about $14 billion in debt due to the Iran/Iraq war. This isn't the 19th Century anymore so I don't think anyone should just be able to invade another nation just because of greed.
The whole Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm was fully supported by the UN (even the USSR agreed) and probably saw the biggest Coalition since the Second World War. I wouldn't say that's being a global policeman. I'd say it's standing up to a bully who just attacked a kid.
You forget that the Iraqi military was actually large and well equipped in 1991 (its Army was the 5th largest in the world & was battle hardened after the conflict with Iran). Coalition military planners were geniuine worried that we'd take very heavy casualties & Saddam, perhaps unrealistically, was aiming to turn the battle into the next Vietnam. With hindsight we now know that the majority of Iraqi troops, like the rest of the Iraqi people, were poorly treated & didn't particularly want to fight for Saddam.
Meanwhile the West had been training for an all out war in Europe against the Soviets for about 40yrs. Out equipment & doctrine was all set up for a temperate climate (Germany) & was more about preventing thousands of Soviet tanks from punching through our lines rather than advancing into another nation.
It doesn't sound like the Taliban really listen to extradition treaties. If someone killed 3,000 UK citizens I'd expect the government to react. I certainly don't blame the USA for doing the same. It's no different to what happened in 1941 except that Pearl Harbour was a military target.
There was a large international concensus at the time and that NATO would back up the USA.
I wouldn't say any of those dictators are friends of the West and we shouldn't be supporting them in my opinion. However I do think you've got a point about leaving them alone. Unfortunately most of the Middle East isn't particularly interested in democracy - whether this is down to religion or just unfamiliarity with democracy (probably both) and combined with the fact that you're always going to upset some of the local population when you're invading/liberating them means that there's a good chance an insurgency will occur.
It doesn't help that the West has made bad judgment calls & mistakes in certain areas. In 2003 Coalition forces were actually welcomed with open arms by most of the population. In 2011 an American F-15E crashed in Libya and the villagers treated the pilots as liberators. It's no secret that the West has excellent firepower but we do still seem to lack the knowhow when it comes to rebuilding a nation (as Iraq, Afghanistan & Libya have shown).
Trust me, I'm not left wing
.