Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance.

“I
used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college
student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in
her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy
was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now, the student
recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the
security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she
covers her head for safety.

“Now I hate Islam,” she said,
sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al
Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed
for nothing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/world/middleeast/04youth.html