I had the distinct honor and pleasure to be the guest speaker yesterday at a Catholic elementary school which was commemorating Memorial Day by bringing veterans of all ages and eras in to speak to the students.  Following that, we were treated to lunch in the cafeteria.  I spent some time with a young Staff Sergeant who has served in Iraq twice, and a more stellar human being you could not wish to meet.  I also met two Marines who served on Iwo Jima .  We all sat down together and simply reveled in each other’s company.  When I left there, I was part of a contingent of veterans that welcomed a wounded Army Ranger home at the Philadelphia airport.  He was fragged in Iraq , but he wanted nothing more than to mend so that he could get back into the fight.  That is the nature of our current military.  All this leads me to the title of this post.  The ACLU, perverting the Freedom of Information Act, has demanded that photos of alleged torture by American service members be released for the sake of transparency.  What the ACLU truly wants, though, is nothing more than to solidify its power base at the expense of our young men and women in uniform.

I no longer believe that the ACLU is anything other than an organization determined to reshape the United States into a socialist nation in which our only defensive act will be to present our enemies with baskets of kittens.  They do not care that the two young warriors with whom I spent time yesterday could be killed by the release of photos depicting alleged torture.  If it were transparency they truly desired, a narrative of the actions they allege occurred would suffice.  The ACLU does not want that though.  They desire release of photos, which will be used by our enemies for recruiting and propaganda.  That will result in the death of Americans in uniform, but they simply do not care.  They apparently believe that all of us who have worn the uniform of the U.S. are the true enemies of a misguided notion of progress.

For years we have been told repeatedly that Guantanamo Bay is creating more terrorists than it confines, but somehow photos of alleged abuse will not do likewise.  It is a juvenile notion that our enemies in the Global War on Terror will cease attempting to destroy us if we simply pull out of the Middle East and beat our swords into plowshares.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and no amount of feel-good politics will change that.  The ACLU has taken a course of action which must be confronted.  It is time to let them know that, as veterans and troop supporters, we will not let them become complicit in the deaths of our best and brightest so that they can feel good about themselves. 

It is time to take the fight to them.  I am calling on all of you who love our country (and the brave men and women who serve it) to come and stand with me in New York City outside the offices of the ACLU.  We need to let them know that, while our brave men and women are in harm’s way, we will not allow them to be blind-sided by politics.  It is time to give the ACLU a dose of its own medicine.  Let’s show them what free speech really looks like while reminding them that it is the men and women who wear the uniform, not Ivy League degrees, who afford them their level of freedom and liberty.  None of us who have worn the uniform did so to limit free speech, no matter how distasteful.  Yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater is not free speech, nor are actions that will directly increase the likelihood of our warriors being wounded or killed by Islamic terrorists bent on ruling the world.