How do you even begin to wrap your brain around this?

There are some things that I've always assumed are universal desires that all moms share: We want healthy kids who will reach their full potential in life.

I've always thought these truths would transcend race, religion or culture even though they may look slightly different walked out in a remote village in Africa or as a Royal in Buckingham Palace. Still, I could picture moms around the globe having that same glint of hope that their children will use their life to help others, better the world around them or to simply show love where it is needed most.

I was wrong. And I didn't realize how naive and wrong I was until I read this article in The Wall Street Journal:

Zahara Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

I have been trying to write this post for several days because I just can't wrap my brain around those words, "She wants her son to become a suicide bomber."

As a mother, I can't even imagine that as my dream for my child. I can't fathom following a religion that would place such honor on the taking of life. And yet, "Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

As a mom I'm horrified.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life

As an American, I'm outraged.

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

So how does the United States and other Western democracies protect and defend themselves against something so twisted? How do you counter a belief that is so fanatical that you are willing to sacrifice your own child---and in some homes, more than one child?

Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.

I'm sure it's a scenario that our forefathers could never have predicted. Ever. Yet, here we stand as a nation trying to traverse the new rules of engagement and trying to decipher an enemy that may look just like us.

Or like our children.

How do you even begin to wrap your brain around this?

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-do-you-even-begin-to-wrap-your.html