Insurgency, the disruptive effect of militants against a governing power, will not end in Iraq as long as poverty, political corruption and religious intolerance exist. It's like asking if children disputing their parents will ever end.
First, we have to remember the history of Iraq, which was carved out of Mesopotamia by the British after WW-II, a political decision made by the West in complete disregard of the "conditions on the ground" of cultural, religious, and ethnic differences and natural boundaries established by centuries. Immediately thereafter, in 1948, the same Western "conquerors" bequeathed Palestine to the Israelis and established a "pro-western" state while displacing millions of Arabs who had lived there since the Diaspora.
The Third Reich had occupied what we call the Middle East in an attempt to secure its supply of oil, and the Allies fought tooth and nail to wrest that control into their own purview. This was accomplished with Hitler's fall. The Allies won and had little regard for the subtleties of Arab culture or religious boundaries. The Arabs seemed disparate, poor, tribal rather than nationalistic and generally unable to cohere into discrete political groups or nations. So, the United Nations, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, set about creating nation-states with the idea of access to oil just as the Nazis did.
In other words, we completely disrupted the natural topographic, social and religious boundaries that had evolved over millennia and tried to force it all into a tight construct of Western political and economic ideology. We didn't think the Arabs knew or cared. They rode camels and wore funny robes and scratched a minimal living out of the sand and appeared to be so tribal that it never occurred to us they might actually have an overarching, working culture.
Easy to imagine why there is such obdurate conflict in the region and our invasion of Iraq has done little to subdue bruised sensibilities and moral outrage against the West.
We, Europe and the United States, a Christian cabal if there ever was one, forced an entire region of Muslims, with its own internecine provincial and religious disputes, into chaos and we wonder why there's conflict? Please. Our actions gave us the warped ideologue but rich Saudi, Osama bin Laden, who began organizing opposition that led to the horror of 9/11.
The Bush-Cheney doctrine held that we would wipe out the Taliban in Afghanistan and topple Saddam Hussein and then Afghan and Iraqi Arabs would leap to embrace McDonalds and become good Capitalists. We never stopped to think it might be a little more complicated than that.
As long as we are in the region overthrowing governments, dictating policy and treating Arabs as though they are unable to self-govern, there will be violent opposition. Insurgency is only the spear-point of a profound and heartfelt conviction that we have no business telling Arab nations and the religion of Islam what to do. Insurgency is a natural reaction of an established populace to reject an outside occupier regardless of that occupier's good intentions (with which the road to Hell is paved) and we're dealing with the reality of that age-old admonition.
Will the insurgency in Iraq ever end? Will the insurgency in Afghanistan ever end, or the one in Sudan, or Nigeria, or Somalia or Rwanda or Burma? Dang, the list goes on. Maybe, but not because we overthrow regimes and establish puppet governments.
Insurgencies occur when there is a governing body that conflicts with the practices and ideals of a significant portion of a populace. The American Revolution is an example. Another is the Afghans' rejection of the invasion by the USSR. How the Bush-Cheney administration missed that lesson (especially after Vietnam) is a mystery to be detailed by future historians.
It's not that hard. To influence another culture, another religion, or a distant region to adjust to and adopt a new socio-political structure requires these basics:
1. Displaying a tested system that is incontrovertibly superior.
2. Acknowledging that other systems will not adjust easily.
3. Creating opportunities rather than crushing opposition.
The rise of Islamic radical insurgency is a result of the West's failure to meet these three conditions and its arrogant belief that it knows what's best for hundreds of millions of people who've managed their own destinies for thousands of years. One would think our leaders knew better.
The average parent knows better. We can't force our children to do what we want, we can only guide them. It's much harder to get adults to change.