People love to place blame on the U.S. and allied forces, claiming that all the violence in Iraq is a direct result of “occupation”. One would assume the carnage would have stopped since we pulled our troops out of major cities in Iraq, in June, and handed over security to the the Iraqi military forces and police. Not so. The brutal violence continues and seems to be getting worse. Then again, I never bought into the “occupation” excuse for all the suicide bombings occurring on a daily basis, over there. One would think that if hatred of foreign military forces occupying their land was the sole motivating factor, insurgents would have only targeted those ’so-called’ occupiers. But no. Civilians- men, women and children have often been targets of suicide bombers in what has been termed sectarian violence. In other words, Muslims killing other Muslims because they happen to have different beliefs. But the sectarian violence is merely an excuse to prevent democracy from taking root in Iraq, a means of destabilizing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s very fragile government, and so Muslims are willing to sacrifice fellow Muslims to achieve those goals. How tragic and pathetic is that?!

And the violence continues in Iraq, with today being no exception. Considered the bloodiest day this year, 95 people were reported killed and more than 500 wounded in at least 6 separate bombings in Baghdad today. Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, accepting blame, told Iraqiya state television,

“This operation shows negligence, and is considered a security breach for which Iraqi forces must take most of the blame.”

One has to wonder what all these terrorists, insurgents, jihadis etc. would do were there miraculously to be peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. Could they go back to living normal lives? I doubt it. I think they have come to love violence, and would find some way of perpetuating it to satisfy their blood lust.