This exactly.

I always hear people asking "Why do they hate us? Why do they hate our freedom?", etc. But you know, I really can't see a reason why they wouldn't.

I heard this interview recently, from the second Iraq War. It was with this man from Baghdad. He was talking about his experience the first time America invaded Iraq, and how he hated Saddam and resented being forced to fight against Kuwait. He said it's the worst thing you can imagine, to be forced to fight in a war you don't agree with. And he was so horrified to have to take up arms again in the second Iraq War, and also thankful that this time he wasn't sent to the front lines.

He also talked about how it felt to be at home with his wife, sister, and two-year-old son, when the US military bombed Baghdad (I think in this part of the interview he was talking about the second Iraq War). He was saying that it's really horrible, like torture, to be sitting there waiting for death to come (they really believed they were going to die, thankfully none of them did), and to have to explain what's happening to your little boy. He said he was very worried that his son would be traumatized by the bombing, and would grow up with psychological damage.

And it made me think, you know, there's this whole generation of young people there who grew up in the middle of a war. From the time they were children, all these people grew up with bombs going off all over the place, with no stable government or public infrastructure or education. They have no examples of what an American is, except for the soldiers occupying their home and dropping bombs everywhere. Sure, Saddam was awful and did terrible things to his own people, but the people now who are young adults won't remember that. All they know is that there was a government, and maybe people they know will tell them it sucked, but I bet there are plenty of people who will also tell them that things were safer back then. Because, if you weren't on Saddam's shit list, they were safer. But now? Everything around them is a war zone. There's no economic opportunity. There is danger and violence everywhere. Just think about what growing up in that kind of a world would do to someone, psychologically. We have people in our military who come home after a few months or a few years over there, and they have PTSD or at the very least just horrible memories. But imagine that world was the only thing you knew.

I'm not saying it's right for people to join ISIS or commit mass murder or anything like that, obviously. But I am saying that it's pretty ridiculous for our government to go over there and create the perfect environment for extremist ideas to grow in, and then act all surprised when the result is a bunch of extremists who hate America.