Reply #92: Yes, that's a no. [View All]

[customerserviceguy]

While a power vacuum might not have existed upon the death of Saddam (it would depend on what mechanism he had for a successor to his regime) clearly, there will be Shia vs. Sunni conflict in Iraq for years to come. Even without the latest invasion, the steps Saddam took to crush the Shia rebellion in the 1990's would have probably insured that. Of course, that was because we meddled at the end of the first Gulf War, encouraging the Shia to overthrow Saddam.

What we have done is destabilize that country faster than it would have happened on its own, but I think that the Shia-Sunni fight has been centuries in the making, it was just a matter of time before it played out. It might have had a better outcome if that conflict happened a couple more centuries from now, but there's no way of knowing that.