Last year on Veteran's Day, we had more reason to reflect on the bravery of our soldiers and their families than ever before. Historically, we remembered them with parades and ceremonies, but Freedom Alliance, which honors and encourages military service, launched "Support the Troops," and asked Americans to remember our vets particularly the active duty injured soldiers by sending donations of phone cards, gift certificates and magazines to the Freedom Alliance headquarters in Dulles, VA.

"We had the opportunity to tour the amputee facility of Walter Reed Hospital, and while there was no doubt in our minds that these soldiers were receiving fantastic treatment, it was obvious that donations were needed," said Tom Kilgannon, President of Freedom Alliance. "While America has pledged to 'never forget' what our heroic soldiers, firefighters and police did on 9/11, many are unaware of the injuries sustained in Afghanistan and Iraq since then."

A news article was published (November, 2003) that said all but 20 of the 250 beds at Walter Reed were taken up with casualties of the war. Fifty of them had lost limbs, often more than one. The newspaper also said that during the course of the Iraq War, more than 1,875 U.S. soldiers received treatment at Walter Reed, which works out to an average of about 10 a day, 300 a month.

We are currently collecting:

Phone Cards: Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital are from all over the United States, and Walter Reed staff says phone cards are always needed and appreciated.

Clothing Gift Certificates: Many soldiers are admitted with only the clothes on their backs. Please send certificates to clothing stores such as Old Navy or national department stores volunteers will shop for the wounded troops.

Cash Donations are also accepted and are used to meet the special needs of our service members.

Thank you in advance for your support of our men and women in uniform.

You can mail your contribution to:

Freedom Alliance
Support the Troops Campaign
22570 Markey Court, Suite 240
Dulles, VA 20166-6919

Imagine a different November 4, 1979, in Teheran. Shortly after Iranian terrorists storm the American embassy and take some 90 American hostages, President Jimmy Carter announces that Islamic fundamentalism is not a legitimate response to the excess of the Shah but a new and dangerous fascism that threatens all that liberal society holds dear. And then he issues an ultimatum to Teheran's leaders: Release the captives or face a devastating military response.

When that demand is not met, instead of freezing Iran's assets, stopping the importation of its oil, or seeking support at the UN, Carter orders an immediate blockade of the country, followed by promises to bomb, first, all of its major military assets, and then its main government buildings and residences of its ruling mullocracy. The Ayatollah Khomeini may well have called his bluff; we may well have tragically lost the hostages (151 fewer American lives than the Iranian-backed Hezbollah would take four years later in a single day in Lebanon). And there may well have been the sort of chaos in Teheran that we now witness in Baghdad. But we would have seen it all in 1979 and not in 2001, after almost a quarter-century of continuous Middle East terrorism, culminating in the mass murder of 3,000 Americans and the leveling of the World Trade Center.

The twentieth century should have taught the citizens of liberal democracies the catastrophic consequences of placating tyrants. British and French restraint over the occupation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the absorption of the Czech Sudetenland, and the incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia did not win gratitude but rather Hitler's contempt for their weakness. Fifty million dead, the Holocaust, and the near destruction of European civilization were the wages of "appeasement" a term that early-1930s liberals proudly embraced as far more enlightened than the old idea of "deterrence" and "military readiness."

Posted by Tim at 12:34 AM EDT

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