Who's to blame for Paris attacks? Maybe, George W Bush

September the eleventh.  The world froze before unspeakable terror acts shown on live television. America was under attack. Extremists had attacked the core of the world, New York City, leaving all Americans on high alert for years to come. Along with terrorism came fear. Nobody knew where they could attack next. A hysteria  took over the country, from the largest metropolis to the smallest villages. Everybody feared they could be the next target.  Promptly, George W. Bush, commander in chief at that time, bombed targets in Afghanistan supposedly linked to the terrorist group responsible for the attacks on American soil, the Al Qaeda. Although most of the terrorist had Saudi Arabian nationalities, including their supreme leader, Osama Bin Laden, most of the operation took place in Afghan territory. Saudi Arabia, a great American ally in the Middle East and deeply connected with the Bush family,  was unharmed.  George managed to focus the public opinion on the deserts of Afghanistan, where supposedly Osama Bin Laden was taking shelter. After the bombings, American troops were placed on the ground and the ruthless government of the Taliban in Afghanistan was driven from power by the American army. However, most al-Qaeda and Taliban were not captured and allegedly fled to Pakistan. An old Bush's associate was placed in power, Hamid Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe who was deeply tied to the CIA, the Bush family and American petroleum companies.

Days, Weeks and Months passed and no signs of Bin Laden were found. Fear was still the word of the day in America and Bush's administration knew how to take advantage of the fear. George had deeper interests in the Middle East. The Central Asia Gas (CentGas), a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through western Afghanistan, swiftly built right after Karzai took office, seemed not enough. More could be done in that region and more profits collected. Bush decided it was Iraq's turn. Richard Clarke, member of the United States National Security Council during Bush's administration, claimed on an interview on NBC in 2004 that Bush's administration had been planning to do something against Iraq from before the time they came to office and Clarke was supposedly asked on September the twelfth by Bush himself to quickly come up with information that linked Iraq's dictator, Saddam Hussein, to the terror attacks on American soil the day before.

On March twentieth, 2003, American troops landed in Iraq following a brutal media campaign promoted by Bush's administration that convinced Americans that Saddam Hussein had been fabricating mass destruction weapons and harboring Al Qaeda terrorists, which later proved to be completely false. Although United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they had found no indication that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an active program of such weapons, Iraq was invaded anyway. Saddam rapidly ran away as the first bombs exploded near his palace, hid for a few months and was later captured in a hiding place under the ground. Iraqis were free from their ruthless dictator and American Petroleum companies were free to drill as much as they wanted. A bright picture, wouldn't you say? Wrong. As American troops overthrew Hussein and disbanded the Iraqi army, chaos erupted as a power vacuum was created. From the void left by the American invasion a man emerges: the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the precursor of ISIS. Zarqawi pledged alliance to Osama Bin Laden and went to Iraq to fight the US army. Zarqawi founded the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and took advantage of the chaos in the country to start recruiting jobless Sunnis to join the fight against America. Zarqawi's vision went beyond Bin Laden's. His ultimate dream was to create an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East and was ready to do anything to reach that goal. He is reportedly responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the war and accused of turning an insurgency against American troops into a Shiite-Sunni civil war, since the president chosen to run Iraq by Bush's administration was Shiite. American bombs killed Zarqawi in 2006 but did not kill his seeds, which grew fructiferous in Camp Bucca, an American prison in Iraq.

In Camp Bucca, the most dangerous terrorists of Iraq shared their cells with common criminals and foot soldiers who fought against the American invasion. The prison, obviously, did not  fulfill its purpose and actually became a "jihadist university", specially for a man: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri, an ordinary Sunni soldier who was radicalized within the walls of the American prison. Ibrahim al-Badri is also known today  as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS and self-proclaimed caliph. In camp Bucca, Bakr al-Baghdadi networked with the most dangerous men of Iraq and former Saddam's soldiers, also incarcerated. The American prison provided crucial knowledge about Guerrilla warfare and soldier recruitment. Inadvertently, Americans released the most dangerous man alive in 2009 along with other future leaders of ISIS.  Bakr al-Baghdadi walked away as free man and was ready to put in motion his ambitious plan.

In 2006, the AQI became stronger after an alliance with other Sunni insurgent groups and former high ranking officers from Saddam Houssein's old army. They formed the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. When both of them were killed in a American operation in April 2010, Bakr al-Baghdadi took over their place. Under Bakr, ISI easily defeated the Iraqi army in the northern part of the country, an army which had been recruited, trained, funded and armed by the American Government. Taking advantage of a devastating civil war which is currently taking place in Syria since the Arab Spring in in 2011, ISI managed to move forward, taking control of the southern part of Syria, becoming the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria", ISIS.

Yesterday's attacks in Paris are strictly linked to the attacks in New York through a series of mistaken decisions made by the American Government. Invading Iraq was pointless, unnecessary and only worsened a delicate and complex conflict which takes place among the sectarian divisions of Curds, Shiites and Sunnis for years. Iraq does not exist anymore. When Saddam Hussein was toppled, the only thing that "glued" the country together vanished. The country became an aggregate of peoples who do not see themselves as Iraqi and are constantly fighting among themselves. The invasion divided the nation and helped to create the world's most cruel and merciless terrorist organization, which is responsible for raping, brainwashing, torturing and killing thousands of innocent lives. Iraqis and Syrians are now fleeing desperately their home country, running away from ISIS and regional conflicts in an almost suicide journey to Europe. All of that are ripples of a single terrible decision made by George W. Bush: invading Iraq. If it were not for the Bush's invasion of Iraq and the subsequent termination of the Iraqi Army by the United States, there would be no ISIS today, no dead kid by the beach, no merciless beheadings, nor terrorist attacks in Paris.