If mothers were in charge, would there be no war?

On day one, more than 170 children were murdered at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Iran. 170 murdered girls. We say this over and over again, this military stat. 170 children at school. A number. A figure.

“Well, we don’t know if we did it.” “It’s under investigation… the 170 children dead thing.”

A data set.

170 young girls sitting at little desks my bum wouldn’t fit in, rainbow backpacks hung on the walls, 8-year-olds giggling through the halls. That silly laugh only a child can produce. The beauty, the learning, the way she tells you she loves you, screaming it to the world when you pick her up from school. The way she holds your hand, rubs your arm, wraps her body around yours like a spider monkey. The things a mother knows so deeply.

170 gone because of a perceived, I mean imminent (but really perceived) threat.

***

Last Friday, I wrote this entire article on my phone, texting myself as I cried while listening to the New York Times podcast about the investigation of the deaths of those children. The unraveling of it. The slow, careful stitching together of facts that point to the US military. A Tomahawk missile obliterating a school. The way they verified the imagery, traced the fragments, confirmed the weapon (only the US uses Tomahawks). The details about how the US is operating in the south while Israel moves north. And how Trump won’t admit to the killing of children. How the language twists. How the government tries to soften it, reposition it, let it dissolve into the noise. How it “could have” been an Iranian mistake (which it was not).

I listened to the investigation, the apologies that should come. But also the bluntness, the rhetoric of strength, the refusal to apologize, the need to stand firm. I listened like I’ve been trained to, like a damn good student, an international aid worker. Absorbing. Analyzing. Thinking about media. About who says what. About talking points and positioning. About war strategy. About how numbers are framed. How deaths are counted. How children become figures.

I felt my strategic brain working, turning, processing.

While something else started opening.

Then I thought about Nina and I cried. I cried for the mothers, the fathers, the sisters, the brothers. I bawled as I listened to a podcast about murdered children while making Nina’s 3-year birthday cake.

***

As a mother, life has opened up a different spectrum of color. Before, it was blue and purple and teal. Now it’s lemon yellow, orangey orange, and ruby red. The primary, the base, the first imaginations, realizations. The first time she understands what te quiero means. Or, when she learns what freeze tag is (though, you don’t get unlimited freezes!), or insists on doing something sola, even if it takes ten times longer.

I see the world through her eyes. I see it for what will help her, grow her, protect her. For fuck’s sake, I just spent three days scrubbing oil off a used bike so she would wake up and feel that special joy for a “new” bike (that is far too big for her) on the morning of her third birthday. I spent hours baking (and re-baking) and painting a butter-cream Stitch on her cake because that raw joy of a child is unexplainable.

But when I hear about children killed, I sometimes shut down my emotion and go to the logical. In Sudan, 85,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. In Gaza, in two years of war, over 64,000 children have been killed or maimed. In Ukraine, one third of all children have been displaced, with over 3,200 killed and injured. On day one of the US-Israel-Iran war, a US Tomahawk killed 170 children. That number grows each day.

Trump said a couple weeks ago that if data shows the US was responsible for the girls’ school bombing that “I’ll take responsibility.”

Fuck the macho taking responsibility bullshit.

I’m not a fool. I try to understand the military logic. The need to neutralize a threat. The geopolitical chessboard. The Iranian regime’s violence against its own people. The global dependence on oil. The strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz. Power. Control. Stability narratives. I read. I listen. I try to comprehend the machinery of war.

But to earn power at what cost?

The pain of a child lost will never go away.

***

In my day job, I write for UNICEF. Currently, for Ukraine. And the facts go in and go on. How many schools damaged. How many missiles hit infrastructure. How many children can’t go back to school because energy systems are destroyed and there is no electricity. How many children died this month. Figures. Data. Strategy. How to write it in a compelling way so the donor keeps giving. How to frame it so governments understand where to prioritize. It’s the humanitarian side.

Sometimes I write about emotional things without emotion.

I’ve been writing about children for years. Children abused. Children out of school. Children forced into marriage. Children murdered. Children starving. Bony limbs, hollow eyes. Sometimes due to climate disasters or economic tragedy. But mostly these days, it’s war.

And it is only when motherhood hit that I really started feeling it. Really empathizing it. Realizing life is no longer mine. It is Nina’s. It is the children’s.

***

And the question we keep asking, the debate, the fucking talking point for years is “men cause wars, not women.” And yes, historically, men have overwhelmingly led nations into war.

Women have done it too. Indira Gandhi led India into the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, a conflict that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Margaret Thatcher drove the UK into the Malvinas/Falkands War, sending troops across the world into violent confrontation. Women can choose war over diplomacy.

But I can’t imagine the pain they feel. Especially the mothers who choose war.

I’m not saying men don’t have the capacity to feel. But there is something about motherhood. The hormones. The wiring. The constant, consuming awareness. All day I think about what needs to be cleaned to make a safe space. What she needs to eat. Whether she’s warm enough. Happy enough. Safe enough. It’s all tied to emotion.

I do not think dominate, overcome. I think protect, make a safe space. I need to build a home. I need my child to eat, to laugh, to feel safe.

Was that (perceived) threat worth the biggest mistake in modern war history? Was it worth the murdering of hundreds of innocent school children?

***

The dichotomy of it all is that if my daughter was threatened, seriously, imminently threatened…

I would kill.