Given the fatal weaknesses in Saddam's position, this day could come sooner than many people think. Unfortunately Saddam's weaknesses are concealed by false presumptions. The first is the notion that dictators bring stability. The Arab world is proof of the falsity of this notion. Dictators bring stasis, not stability.
Stasis freezes things.
It is no accident that the Arab world has seen virtually none of the economic development which most of Asia has enjoyed over the past two generations. Despite the entrepreneurial talents of their peoples, the Arab one-man regime states remain pathetically poor. And because frozen things inevitably thaw, dictatorships in their endings do not bring stability, but uproar, with a potential for conflict. A variation on this theme is the presumption, also false in my view, that Iraq is an artificial state with a weak center. Saddam keeps Iraq together, so the argument goes, and since we need an Iraq strong enough to balance Iran, we should leave Saddam where he is.