I grew up next door to a Jewish family. We were friendly. In the early 80s an Iranian family moved in next to the Jewish family. My little brother became good friends with their sons. Everybody got along swimmingly.

If the Iraqi gov't becomes a shiite dominated theocracy like the one in Iran, that would be bad. But if it becomes a representative gov't, where the majority rules but minority rights are preserved, if it has legitimacy in the eyes of the people and they are willing to tolerate differences among themselves, and the gov't works against the tyranny of the majority which seems so common over there, then that would be ideal. That kind of democracy would not be a threat to anybody.

I don't see how we could maintain a puppet state in that part of the world without having troops on the ground permanently.