I guess this is refreshing.  Hard for me to feel too much love for someone who didn't mind the hatred being spread, so long as it wasn't directed toward her.

That was a great article.  It was pretty damn harrowing though.  As nice as it is to see brutal quasi-theocratic thugs get discredited (most of them use religion as a thin mask behind which to hide their criminality), and as much as it gives me great joy to see this make others question their faith, one wonders if losing faith because of such extreme violence will lead to something good, or whether the brutality will leave people's mental states worse off.  

Still, though: if this make theocracy tougher to bloom I am happy.  But it is hard to be happy about the violence needed to create this.  

Hopeful? grasping at straws more like it. The fighting has little to do with religion and everything to do with power. Iraq is a tribal country first and foremost and until they figure out a way to live with the equitable sharing of power and wealth, they will go on killing each other, regardless of what a few college students say.

I think it offers hope in that it's now very clear that the jihadist "pitch" to prospective recruits is almost totally about material or at least non-religious, apolitical incentives-- the same pitch, more or less, that a drug dealer makes to prospective mules.

If there's ever a surge that would work, it's a massive civil effort to get money and jobs to young unemployed Iraqi men in neighborhoods where the jihad does most of its recruiting. This isn't rocket science.

Does the same rocket science apply to the West Bank?

I think so.

It would if there were * also *, on the military side accompanying the civil effort, a massive foreign military presence there to hunt down Hamas commandoes. Are you proposing, what, an Arab League force to smash Hamas? NATO?

My Gawd!  This sounds like something one would find cheered at 'The Corner' at NRO.

So Isaac - you say, "This is not just refreshing, but also hopeful."  A college student says, “Now I hate Islam.”  THAT'S 'refreshing? That's 'hopeful'??  The key graf is NOT what you quoted; the entire point is that the youth are disillusioned & skeptical.  Another way of saying that is disenchantment & misdirection.  And we all know where that can lead.  It's just incredible that you would be refreshed by the next generation of this ravaged country losing all faith in their religion.

Honestly, how much lower is TNR going to have to sink before it gets a daily spot on FauxNews?

"I used to love George Bush," proclaimed a 24-year-old Texan college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war-fatigue took hold in her native Houston. The March, 2003 strike at the axis of evil was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now the student recites the familiar complaints: The war in Iraq has not made her feel any more secure; the US government spends too many tax dollars fighting a lost cause; the government has engaged in unconstitutional actions.

"Now I hate Republicans," she said, tending to her sick mother who can't afford health insurance. "Bush and the rest of them are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing."

....I have a severe problem with hawks who itch and itch for war, then get cold feet once---egads!----people die, and the world goes to hell. If they'd listened to us in the first place...but no matter how many times we're right, they never do.