] On the WOT:
]
] Iraq will slowly become an Islamic fundamentalist state. The
] U.S. will be largely out of there within a year and on to
] Pakistan. We'll get Bin Laden, but Islamic Fundamentalism will
] continue to fester and will rear it's head again in a decade
] or so. Bush will be seen as having won the WoT in the short
] term.

I disagree. Iraq will become a fundamentalist state, but it will remain in state of civil war for quite some time. You have 2 Islamic sects, the minority one repressed the majority one for decades. Sunni's don't want free or fair elections, because they will not have enough representitives to prevent rather nasty laws against them from being passed. I'm talking Jews in 1930's Germany style laws. The only hope for the Sunni's is to have the ratio of people in the gov't representing them be disproportional to their % of the population. But the Shiits are not going to let them having anything close to power again. Listen very closely: Popular elections, with the number of representatives for different ethic/religous group being proportional to actual populations of those groups will not happen. There is too much hostility between the groups, and we are stupid if we think 2 years has cured it.

None of this even mentions the Kurds, which have basically had their own country for the last decade or so, and aren't really liked by anyone. They sure as hell are not going to disarm and follow the laws being passed in Baghdad. They will resist, with lethal force.

Bush is kind of screwed on Iraq. The only way Iraq will be able to have any type of stable peace in the near term (next decade) is a) A new dictator, or extremely pro-Shiite anti-Sunni government. It will not be anything close to the "island of democrasy" Bush promised. b) A large, non-Iraqi military force staying there basically locking down the country, and enforcing the will of the government composed of equal Shiites and Sunnis (and maybe Kurds, but most likely not). It can't be an Iraqi force, because the Iraqi government would use to against the Sunnis and/or Kurds. The problem for Bush is, thanks to his extreme foreign policy, Non-Iraqi basically means US, unless Bush manages to get a multinational force from different Arab countries instead (he won't).

He pulls out, Iraq collapses, into something maybe slightly than Saddam's government, and Bush has to explain what our sons and daughters were dying for. He stays, and our troops will continue to be killed off one by one, because the people will not view the government as a legitiment representation of the people (because it isn't).

RE: Iraq Predictions