After a second grader in New Jersey went to jail for drawing a water pistol shooting his teacher, a wave of symbolic terrorism has gripped America as more incidents come to light. In these incidents, which are part hate crime and part terrorist attack, people draw ugly and primitive reminders of death and destruction.

"I was terrified when I saw it," said Susan Lawson, 34, of Merritt's Trace, Pennsylvania. Her daughter, Lisa, now spends her days at the maximum security prison nearby. When Lisa was five, her father died choking on a McDonald's hamburger. When Lisa turned nine, she handed in a drawing of Big Macs attacking Pearl Harbor and was immediately swept into the criminal courts system.

Some attacks have been much harder to detect. The visual terror struck when six-year-old Tom Hankey drew his family's vacation in sunny Sri Lanka, complete with a towering tsunami wave that unfairly took the lives of those who happened to be on the beach. "The language of this drawing is sheer horror," said his teacher, Marilyn Wong. "These waves threaten innocent humanity like the knowledge that we will all die someday, and we had to remove Tommy from class before the hatred and morbidity spread to other students."

Government officials caution that this wave of symbolic terrorism knows no bounds and citizens must be aware at all times. If you see someone drawing pictures or symbols of death, hatred, misery or disease, stop and ask yourself: why would a healthy person draw such a thing? Instead, what you are witnessing is the latest tactic in the terrorist assault on America. Do what's right and turn them in before they can spread the horror.