The key thing here is that she had already met the President, back just after her son was lost, and her story then was much different than now.
Clearly, someone has worked on her mind to leverage her grief to their agenda. Of course this is wrong and sick.
The larger point here, though, is all about the personal grief of one mother for her lost son as compared to the national grief of lost soldiers for the greater cause.
There is nothing, and I really mean *nothing* about war losses that will ever make sense to those who suffer the personal loss. Ask the mother of someone lost at D-Day on Normandy whether they are glad they lost their son for a good cause. Nothing will ever make them "glad". They might after many years finally see their loss from a longer perspective, but none of this would have made the least bit of sense or provided the least bit of consolation on the day that the telegram arrived.
Personal losses will always overwhelm and we are merely stupid if we think there is anything we can say that will make it make sense to them.
This is not to say that it is in any way wrong when from time to time nations must make these sorts of choices. When nations make the decision to go to war, we are acknowledging and agreeing to these losses and the grief inflicted on the innocent and uninvolved.
Because, while it may never make sense to the mother losing a son, it is in the name of the many more sons who the nation hopes never to have to send that the deed is done.
Well said.