Moms vs. Al Qaeda

Did you know that Al Qaeda released more than "450 statements, books, articles, magazines, audio recordings, short videos of attacks and longer films" to the world wide web in 2007?  Reading that stat from an opinion piece in today's New York Times had me thinking.  First--wow.  Talk about a productive network.  They are proliferate, are they not?  Sinister, but proliferate.

My immediate reaction was a bit of guilt.  I barely get five posts out a week, and certainly my to-do list grows exponentially faster than my "done" list.  But, I have to cut myself some slack.  Al Qaeda certainly has more manpower than I do--I couldn't compete if I tried.

Then I got to thinking about how powerful the internet is, and how connections are made, and networks built, and influence wielded.  What if, I considered, women could harness this same web-strategy as Al Qaeda, and just flood the internet with writings and statements and books and films?  Only instead of violence and hatred, our topics would be about nurturing our communities and raising our children and boosting the economy.  

And then I spent some time surfing online.  Visiting blogs and websites maintained by women mostly.  And I realized that if there really was a competition to flood the internet, moms would beat the pants off of Al Qaeda.  Hands down.  No contest.  Even more, these moms are organized, with their own networks and advertising and public relations companies.  And they are very popular.  More popular, I'm guessing, than Al Qaeda.  

For me, this is just one more confirmation to my firm belief that it is a great time to be a woman leading in her community--be it in her neighborhood, or online.  We're naturals at it.  The blogsphere is just one of many examples.  

Housewife.  Mom.  Stay-at-home-working-mom....  Leader.  Visionary.  Influencer.  

Al Qaeda doesn't stand a chance.