Talk To Your Kids About Osama bin Ladin
Seizing the moment to teach BIG lessons to our kids
Remember when thousands of Americans were brutally murdered by giant flying missiles filled with flammable liquid? When firefighters, cops, EMTs and even a chaplain ran toward the buildings and up dozens of flights of stairs to rescue people — only to perish when the buildings collapsed on top of them?
How about that same day when one of those giant, flammable makeshift bombs flew right into one of the most important buildings full of elected officials and many of the people essential to the running of our nation, right in the center of Washington DC?
Remember when a group of brave passengers figured out the fate of their hijacked plane and took over, attempted to regain control and then died as heroes who prevented hundreds — if not thousands — more murders?
You remember all of this. You remember how it felt that day.
You know what I mean when I say, “Let’s roll” and how it silences a room.
Of course you do.
It was 9/11/2001.
Maybe you lost someone you loved that day. Maybe you lost people in the years that followed from the cluster of diseases that killed first responders and the folks who worked to recover bodies and clear the area in the months after the attacks.
Maybe you know that deaths from 9/11-related diseases will outnumber the total number of deaths on that horrific day.
Osama bin Ladin did that. We remember.
But you know who doesn’t remember? Our kids.
That’s because Gen-Z wasn’t born yet, or they were too young to remember.
That’s why I wasn’t all that surprised to learn that a portion of a manifesto written by one of the worst terroristic mass murderers in modern history, Osama bin Ladin, recently went viral on TikTok. People shared it as commentary on what’s happening in the Middle East right now.
I’m not here to litigate the Israel/Palestine issue. If you think it’s simple, you and I live on different planets. It’s thousands of years old with all sorts of bad guys and all sorts of suffering innocents. But one thing I hope we can all agree on is that there is no world where children deserve to be killed or where rape should be considered a normal consequence of war.
Now that this is out of the way, let’s get into it.
I believe this message went viral because it’s likely the first time this generation has heard an in-depth critique of US foreign policy.
The folks who shared this probably don’t even know the name ‘Al Qaeda’ or how US soldiers fought alongside Taliban predecessors in Afghanistan against the Soviets.
Their hearts are (likely) in the right place — they see the suffering of innocent people while they’re using social media. They see the bombings of hospitals, the suffering of children, the desperation of people dying of thirst and lack of food or medical care. They see the faces of people taken hostage, including small children, whose families don’t even know if they’re alive. They understand how bad it is.
They’re lost because nobody is teaching them accurate history of this conflict — most adults don’t really know. So when people online make it seem simple, they mobilize others.
Because nobody wants to sit in a feeling of ignorance or helplessness.
This is an opportunity to invite our kids into conversations about media literacy.
Yes, that sounds hard and boring. But what happens when we leave kids to learn about stuff like this from the internet?
What happens is that a bunch of teenagers and people in their 20s go around sharing the words of a man who killed thousands because he wanted to destroy the United States.
We have to remind them that their frustrations over this conflict are natural and normal — but that it is a conflict that has been happening for literally thousands of years and anyone who has a “simple answer” or points a finger at a single person or entity is over-simplifying the past.
We have to remind them that our frustrations and heartbreak are never a justification for abandoning our values or our morality.
We have to remind them that even Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini said things that made sense sometimes, things that were compelling and felt like they might be solutions to whatever challenges the world was facing during their rise. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have risen to power.
Anyone can seem sane and insightful when you edit their horrific crimes out of history.
They should seek out educated people who are not mass murdering terrorists saying thoughtful things. Remind them that we won’t always agree with all of the nuanced, ethical analysis we encounter on this subject, but that it is worth listening to diverse perspectives in order to understand.
One good rule to follow:
If you can’t accurately express the positions of both sides of an issue, you don’t have enough knowledge to speak publicly about it until you do.
It is our job as parents to take opportunities like this one — the fresh popularization of Osama bin Ladin of all people — to teach and reinforce media literacy, digital responsibility, and your own family’s values.
These may be the most important lessons we teach them.
Here are a few short take-aways to start with. If you have more ideas, please share them in the comments.
Never take anything you find online at its word. Investigate investigate investigate.
You may be pressured to speak up about something or told you’ll regret being silent. And this may be true.
But you’ll regret sharing hate-based ideas even more if you don’t dig deep into the issue first.
Find new heroes. They’re all around us. Look for the people who stand by their ethics while also refusing to dehumanize anyone.
It hurts. I know. It’s supposed to. But don’t let it turn off your heart (or your brain).
And if it does seem like a child is intentionally sharing extremist, anti-democracy or hate-based ideology, it’s their parent’s job to intervene and even find a professional to mediate conversations with them.
*Cover image is a still from the embedded video about Father Mychal Judge
Joanna Schroeder is a writer, editor and media critic. She is co-author of the forthcoming book, Talk To Your Boys: 27 Crucial Conversations To Have With Your Teenage Sons and co-host of the iHeartRadio podcast Open Relationships: Transforming Together. For more, visit her LinkTree.