I was listening to Fareed Zacharia speak on the Daily Show about this problem and the answer I would give is likely: Yes.
The reason for this is Americans and Europeans are not a part of Middle Eastern Culture generally. So, they tend to make mistakes that locals might not. So, how could the U.S. and NATO not make the same mistakes in Syria as in Iraq?
By listening to local scholars and historians and government leaders as to what reactions are going to tend to be among locals given different scenarios.
The problem right now for Americans and NATO countries and the rest of the world is primarily the stances of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran and Russia.
Most other positions of groups of people in the area the U.S. and NATO likely can deal with.
But, not so much what Russia, Iran, Al Qaeda and ISIS are thinking and doing.
So, I would say because of this the outcome could be in the end about 10 times as bad or more than what we wound up with in Iraq right now, with the Sunni areas mostly run by ISIS and the Shia areas in Iraq mostly run by Shias and the Iranian puppet government now in southern Iraq.
By getting rid of Saddam Hussein and Qaddaffi we now have ISIS and Al Nusra and more Al Qaeda.
Even if we get rid of ISIS it won't totally go away as a terrorist organization. Mostly what could be eliminated is ISIS as a country that stretches through half of Syria in the North on into Northern IRaq including a city formerly of 2 million people called Mosul.
But, I could easily say here that ISIS would not exist presently if Saddam Hussein was still in power and Qaddaffi was still in power because those two would have had all the ISIS people killed already or driven out of their countries.
So, this is part of the lesson that the U.S. and NATO countries needed to learn the hard way since 2001.
By getting rid of Saddam Hussein because he threatened the life of the first president Bush after he was in office in 1988 the U.S. helped create the situation where something like ISIS could arise when Sunnis were tortured and massacred by the Alawite shiite minority government of Assad in Syria.
So, western solutions to Middle Eastern problems continue to not work in the short run or the long run because western leaders do not understand the local histories and loyalties and behavior enough to make long term wise decisions regarding the middle east.
And likely this hasn't changed really because those making military decisions are usually very Christian in their thinking. It's not that it's a bad thing to be Christian in one's thinking but unless one understands Muslim types of thinking both Shiite and Sunni and Wahabi, mistakes are going to be made and 20 years from now something worse than ISIS will exist in the middle East because of the mistakes of Russia, Iran and Assad right now.
However, if you were to ask every nation on earth if we need to get rid of ISIS I am sure you would get a unanimous answer of "Yes, anyway possible, get rid of ISIS."
But, because ISIS is a reaction to the persecution of Sunni Muslims just getting rid of ISIS really doesn't solve the problems presently in the Middle East of sectarian warfare between Shiites and Sunni Muslims ongoing now.
And because of this Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya at least and probably more places are not where you would ever choose to go to raise children at this point and this could remain true for 10, 20, or even 50 years or longer now because of all of the very serious mistakes everyone has made there.
So, we may be looking at an ongoing bloodbath in the Middle East for 20 to 50 years or more whether or not ISIS is eliminated completely as a country in the next few years by Russia, Iran and NATO and the U.S.
So, will the Shiites and the Sunnis completely kill each other off in the next century?
No. This isn't going to happen because there are only 161 million Shiites on earth but there are 1.2 Billion Sunni Muslims on earth.
So, anyway you look at this it is an ongoing mess for decades to come if not centuries at this point.
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