Recently, there have been a number of terror attacks around the world. The alarmingly swift rise of DAESH coupled with an already tenuous political situation in the Middle East has contributed to this infamous year of terror, and has ultimately culminated in the current crisis in Aleppo. In the face of such unprecedented hatred and extremism, people and lawmakers all across the globe have been scratching their heads, trying to puzzle out what could have possibly happened to cause this situation. How did we get here? Why did this happen? Who is responsible for this?

Short answer: The United States. No, really. The United States is to blame.

Long answer, though? It is a combination of the West's (read: the United States') constant and continued interference in the Middle Eastern region that has brought us to this place. With greed on the brain and thoughts of monopolies on Middle Eastern oil, the United States has a long history of shoving their noses in a region, where their noses really do not belong.

People believe this all started when Osama bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, and Saddam Hussein quickly followed with the invasion of Kuwait with his WMDs. But U.S. involvement in the region goes back much farther than that, and is far more complicated and convoluted than anyone truly cares to admit.

Let's begin with Iran. My family have always been supporters of the Shah; my father frequently tells tales of a time of prosperity and culture under the Pahlavi reign, and how our family thrived from his patronage. However, as a student of modern political theory, I can no longer deny how tyrannical and weak the Shah really was, and how he ultimately hurt Iran in the long run. So why did he prosper in the region? The answer is that the United States wanted their weak political puppet to thrive, that's why. In 1953, the CIA helped orchestrate a coup d'etat to overthrow Democratically-elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had such a bright plan for the future of Iran that I have no doubt that had he been allowed to remain in power, Iran would be a part of the leading world order, not a thorn in its side. They then placed Shah Pahlavi in power, who buckled at the first sign of turmoil in the form of the Cultural Revolution of 1979. Not even a year later, when Iraq invaded Iran and sparked the eight year long Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. continued to undermine Iran by sending weapons and aiding Iraq's then-president Saddam Hussein against Iran.

But Iran is to blame for what happened, right?

Now let's move on to Afghanistan. In 1979, at the same time the Cultural Revolution was happening in Iran, the U.S. helped rebel forces in Afghanistan during the Afghan-Soviet war, one of the many proxy-wars the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought against each other in the infamous Cold War. At the time, these rebels were called the Mujahideen fighters. Now, they're known by a much more common name: the Taliban and al Qaeda. That's right, the U.S. secretly funded, and directly contributed to, the group that would eventually become the basis for two of the most notorious terror organizations in the world. Eventually, these groups became such a problem for the West that we declared the generic, and still somewhat unclear, if we're being totally honest, "War on Terror" in response to the 9/11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda.

But wait, there's more!

The most recent story, and the one most of you really care about, is where the hack DAESH even came from. Well, in a surprising twist none of you saw coming, the US helped contribute to their rise, too.

So after the U.S. quite literally helped Saddam Hussein become the vicious and ruthless dictator he's known as today by sending him weapons and legitimizing his power in the region over Iran, the fickle U.S. changed their mind about this dictator they accidentally helped bring to power and decided to invade Iraq under the guise of "stopping him" and "restoring peace to his country." To justify this point, the Bush Administration put out what we now know to be a false report that Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, which is why we were able to invade the country, and then subsequently dismantle their government and completely destroy their military. They constantly continued to show favor to the minority Shiite faction, completely alienating the majority Sunni power based on their affiliation with Saddam Hussein and what the West erroneously perceived as extremism. This led to the exacerbation of secular tensions in the country, and the dissolution of the Baath party did nothing to alleviate these tensions. Then, in the middle of rebuilding Iraq, the U.S. decided to withdraw their forces, leaving a vacuum of power in the country that was quickly filled by the Sunni extremists we have come to recognize as DAESH.

There has been a lot of blaming and mud-slinging in our very tense society as of late. People are looking for a scapegoat to take the blame for what's happening, for all the violence, for the extremism they see every day. But contrary to popular belief, it's actually not Islam's fault. It isn't the Middle East's fault, it isn't Germany's lax immigration policy's fault, it isn't Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan's fault that this is happening. Heck, it isn't even completely DAESH or al Qaeda or the Taliban's fault, or xenophobic tendencies or the Western media's fault either.

No. The majority of the blame should be laid at the United States' door. They have constantly undermined democracy in the region, intentionally keeping it weak and fractured. They have directly funded and contributed to organizations that later become known terror groups, and have exacerbated secular tensions in the regions through their ineffectual and harmful policies and actions in a region they still know absolutely nothing about after all these years of interference.

So who is really to blame for the rise of DAESH?