These are schoolgirls and young children are highly vulnerable. I pity them. I hope they return home safely.
I may be being so hard on them because, like I was kind of saying before, I really do think that if I were given the opportunity to at an earlier time in my life, I would have done the same thing as them. And if I had, I wouldn't think that being 17 would have made my decisions anyone's responsibility but my own. And god forbid if I brought a 15 year old along for the ride. They're running to an join an organization that everyone and their mother knows just burned a man to death in a cage.
I know my sympathy shouldn't be finite, but this situation is so full of tragedies and just unimaginably terrible stories, and most are from the people who, far from running to the war because of whatever grandiose fantasies they wish to play out, were sucked up in it and lost everything, many of whom were these girls' ages or younger. And yes, they're young, and obviously deluded, but the same can be said about so many of the volunteers, and it's extremely hard to keep feeling sympathetic when you see these foreign fighters doing horrific things. I feel truly terrible for the family of these girls, and I do hope that they come out of this safely, and have the good fortune that I did to grow up a bit more and turn their lives around.
Objectively, I know you and asbie are right, but this is the same reason that Tzorzis makes me cringe. It's like looking in a mirror at the worst of myself, and it's hard to be fair about them. But I'm glad you are.