The purview of the American Civil Liberties Union eschews passé conceptions of modernity and realism and instead focuses on a much more exciting fantasy world where America is the enemy of humanity. It is no wonder that the old appellation of ‘irrelevant’ is being succeeded by the newer ‘anti-American,’ for the ACLU’s activities seem increasingly so. The organization that purports to be “the nation’s guardian of liberty” doesn’t quite carry itself as a proper citadel when so much of its resources go into blatant partisan advocacy. The most dangerous output of the ACLU and other left-wing organizations like it is the constant hyperbole, misrepresentation, distortion, and lies about American prisons overseas. Last week, the nation saw what a newsmagazine blurb wrought when it levied inaccurate criticisms against the US military. The ACLU and others have, similarly, constructed a myth of the Gitmo gulag; an entire fabricated world where United States machinations are the cause of the world’s antipathy. In advocating this falsehood and preaching it worldwide, a dangerous self-fulfilling prophesy is created: harmful to our nation and our troops overseas.

The latest ACLU report attempts to fan flames lit by recent false reports that soldiers desecrated the Koran by flushing it down a toilet. Citing documents from 2002 obtained in a recent Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU alleges that copies of the Koran were “being kicked, withheld as punishment, and thrown on the floor…[and] mocked during prayers.” And-yes-the latest press release presents further evidence of Korans-in-the-toilet. The sourcing in this report is more tenuous than the single anonymous informant behind the Newsweek incident: the ACLU cites anonymous prisoners, who three years ago made these claims to FBI investigators. That the organization bases its research upon singular claims of unknown incarcerated individuals is folly enough-imagine the wealth of misinformation that would pollute newspapers if the words of every incarcerated suspect were combed for conspiracy theories-it is more troubling that ACLU press releases invariably turn into AP wire reports.

For Muslims in the Middle East ‘just looking for an excuse’, the work of American left-wing organizations is gold.

The detention complex at Guantanamo Bay is now being called “the gulag of our time” by Washington-based Amnesty International, a characterization that at once minimizes the horror inflicted upon political dissidents in the Soviet forced-labor camps and unfairly sullies the name of American efforts to contain captured terrorists and stateless aggressors. Gitmo is hardly a gulag. There is no forced manual labor, no summary executions. The prisoners are not jailed for ideological dissidence, but for support of terrorism. There are not millions; there are hundreds. There are no maloletki zones for children the warden deems useless. Absent, too, from US prisons, are special camps for ‘wives of traitors of motherland.’ The men held at Guantanamo Bay are the enemies of humanity, not their captors. For providing material support to terrorists-or for engaging in terrorism themselves-these men are rightfully incarcerated. And yet the United States is somehow leading the downfall of human rights.

To be sure, the tactics employed by these left-wing groups do not merely play into the hands of al Qaeda remnants and other terrorist organizations: they are the tactics of terrorists. The al Qaeda training manual, “The Military Series,” captured in Manchester, specifically instructed “brothers” to use the political correctness of liberal democracies as a negotiating tool. Abuse is always to be alleged. Religious offense is to be taken at all times. We seem to require reminding that these are the insidious tactics of the same terrorists who executed the attacks on September, 11th.

More than any other people, Americans care how they are seen by others. When the United States and her citizens have a common enemy, as we do now, a surge of nationalism is what carries the nation through those times of monumental pitch that call for rough men and stolid hearts. But as we are projecting liberty abroad, Americans have a right to demand most of its trappings at home. Americans have a right to hold their heads high in foreign lands. They have a right to demand good sense and fair practices from those waging their war overseas. But no American deserves to be subjected to a nationally debilitating myth that unjustly calls their nation’s morals into question. America’s place in history and in this world is at the vanguard of human dignity and freedom for all men. If our tactics are not always sound, let them be corrected. But if our goal is the defeat of terrorism and the hateful ideology that inspires it, we are not helped by the broad strokes of black painted by the likes of the ACLU and Amnesty International, for they arm the true enemy.