Reviewed by Erin Kirkland

I’m ready to stop reading the newspaper altogether. Headlines scream fearful preludes to violence, treachery, and dishonesty that make it difficult to believe sensible people inhabit this big blue marble. Global events have terrified and disgusted us, and shaped how we perceive the leadership of our local, state, and national governments. Enter author Gina Bennett and “National Security Mom“.

Bennett, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Intelligence community with special emphasis on counterterrorism, describes for us in a nutshell our greatest threat to national security policies; us.  Fear, suspicion, and the rapid unraveling of “security”, both as policy and concept, spurred Bennett to look closer at mothering and governing.  “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, “Life is not a fairy tale”, “Choose your friends wisely”. Ponder to the mantras that we as mothers have repeated to our children over and over, apply it to America‘s current governing bodies, and you might see things a bit differently.

Since the U.S. is still floating in the wake of events surrounding September 11th, 2001, Gina Bennett’s candor and blunt realism for what she sees as absolutes for our nation’s success seems too simple at first. But as the book unfolds, page after page of real-life-parenting and real-world intelligence assignments gently lead us towards Bennnett’s theory that “going soft” will make American strong.

Most striking is Bennett’s comparison of national security and the family unit. Indeed, a family’s security “flows from the ability to retain the love and respect family members show each other…” Is this not the basis for the golden rule that children the world over are taught even before their ABC’s? Should not U.S. leaders, as global citizens and parents, be practicing what they have preached as they navigate policy in a world that now appears ready to seize our very souls?

Bennett also addresses the very real sense of fear prevalent since 9-11. Fear is, as anyone who has traveled by air since that day knows, everywhere. It is in our laptops, our shoes, and our cell phones. It resonates through children struggling to understand the departure of a parent to a far off desert. It consumes if we allow it.

The distance between fear and freedom is short. Bennett states, and quite correctly, that terrorists like Osama bin Laden cannot win unless we hand over our freedom; and to do that, we would have to give in to fear. But we are human, too, and Bennett, like all of us, is “tired of being afraid.”

America has the chance to be the ultimate in example-setting by showing respect for its citizens without compromising democratic ideals.  Knowing better than any of us that terrorism must not lead us down the rutted path of security obsession out of fear, Bennett concludes that our influence, if respectful, thoughtful, and candid, can extend to Asia, Africa, South America, and beyond. We are what we are exhibiting to the world. And this, she warns, must be clarified before we can go one step further in raising the bar as parents part of the collective, greater good.