by Ian W.

Created on: July 06, 2007

It is clear to see that the United States is the responsible party for the increase in violence in Iraq over the past few months. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first reason is the troop surge. We have deployed almost 30,000 additional troops to Iraq in an attempt to stem the violence and create some stability for the chaotic country. These troops are meant for combat. Their mission is to seek out and engage the enemy, and that is going to lead to a rise in violence as the insurgent and American forces clash.

Beyond the troop surge, though, the US has created an unstable nation that had been stable before our intervention. Yes, Saddam Hussein was an evil man who gassed his own people. And yes, he probably deserved to die for his crimes against humanity. However, there is no denying that Iraq was a much more stable country under his rule than it has been since he was deposed. When America invaded Iraq, we failed to take into account the socio-theo-political background of the nation. Saddam's Baath Party was a secular party, meaning they had no use for religious types in the government. However, Iraq has a large religious community that is now attempting to assert control over the direction their country is headed. Furthermore, these factions, sects, whatever we call them are at odd with each other. They are, in fact, so at odds with each other that they have started a civil war, which of course leads to an increase in violence.

America invaded Iraq with the misconception that the entire process would be easy. We had a well executed plan for the invasion that worked well. We went in and within three months we had toppled Saddam's reign. Our mistake, though, was in thinking it would end there: Saddam would be out of power and the Iraqis would love us so much they would set aside all their differences and set up a government in accordance with US wishes. Of course this did not happen, and now there are five factions (US/Coalition forces, Sunni insurgents, Shiites, Kurds, and foreign terrorist fighters who want to make war against the US) involved in hostilities in Iraq with no real goal or motivation to end the fighting and find a peaceful solution to the mess.
Also, the US's intent to arm Sunni insurgents to fight Al-Queda will only increase the violence as there will be more weapons available to those willing to fight.

America may not be the only entity to blame for the increasing levels of violence in Iraq (after all, the other warring groups need to take some responsibility for their actions), but we have the biggest share of responsibility for the rising violence in an already violent portion of the world.

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