The following is an open letter from Carol Taber, the president of Family Security Matters, to President Obama.
Dear Mr. President:
On May 9th, the Mojave Memorial Cross was stolen from the United States
World War I memorial in the Mojave Desert, which is a federal crime under the Veterans Memorial Preservation and Recognition Act of 2003.
More than four months have passed and your administration has still refused to take action to replace the Mojave Memorial Cross.
The seven-foot Mojave Memorial Cross was the only World War I memorial designated as a National Memorial by Congress in 2002 with full bipartisan support.
America’s major veterans’ organizations, representing twenty-three million veterans, wrote to you on June 10, 2010, urging you to restore the Mojave Memorial Cross.
It is now four months later and you still have not provided the courtesy of a reply to these veterans.
We ask for your immediate intervention to defend the integrity of federal war memorials against those who would desecrate them by directing the National Park Service to allow a replacement cross to be erected in the Mojave Desert.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy rightly remarked that the Mojave Memorial Cross “evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.”
Mr. President, the National Park Service is arguing that only the original, stolen cross may be erected at the memorial site, and that it would be impermissible to replace the stolen cross with an exact replica.
Mr. President, if you were to endorse the National Park Service’s policy, you would be inviting wholesale desecration of religious symbols at war memorials across the country and at our battlefield cemeteries abroad. If we are not allowed to replace memorial crosses that are stolen or destroyed, then your administration will rightly be seen as openly encouraging attacks on religious symbols.
Mr. President, will you defend the Mojave Memorial Cross or will you side with the interests of thieves and the desecrators of religious symbols?
If you fail to act now, the American people can only believe that the President is declaring open season for the desecration of religious symbols in America.
Sincerely,
Carol A. Taber, President, FamilySecurityMatters.org
The Honorable Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives
Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, USAF (Ret.)
David E. Bonner, USA (Ret.) Chairman, Thor Power Corporation
Lt. General William G. Boykin, USA (Ret.)
Richard W. Carlson, U.S. Ambassador and former director of the Voice of America, former President and CEO of The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Michael J. Del Rosso, Senior Fellow, Center for Security Policy and The Claremont Institute
John M. Del Vecchio, author of “The 13th Valley”, “Carry Me Home”, and “For The Sake of All Living Things”
William A. Donohue, Ph.D., President and CEO, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
Colonel Mercer M. Dorsey Jr., USA (Ret.) Special Forces
Captain Russell C. Drew, USN (ret) Former Director, Science and Technology Policy Office, Executive Office of the President
Captain Christopher Flaesch, USMC (ret) Founder and Former CEO Govolution Inc.
John Howard, Constitutional and corporate litigator and political commentator
Brigadier General Rev. James M. Hutchens, USA (Ret.), Chaplain, PhD
Ruth S. King, Americans for A Safe Israel Executive Committee
Gary G. Kreep, Executive Director, United States Justice Foundation
Maj. General James E. Livingston, USMC (ret) Medal of Honor Recipient
Colonel Gerald M. May, USAF (Ret.)
Andrew McCarthy, Former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York, and bestselling author of “The Grand Jihad”
Colonel Joseph J. McGlinchy, USAF (Ret.)
Lieutenant Chet Nagle, USN (ret) Author of “Iran Covenant” and founding publisher of “The Journal of Defense & Diplomacy”
Colonel Paul A Noel, USMC (ret)
Lt. Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson, USAF (Ret.) Career Air Force officer and pilot; best-selling author of “Dereliction of Duty” and “Conduct Unbecoming”. Carried the “nuclear football” for President William Clinton.
Lt. Colonel Robert A. Perrich, Aviation Branch, USA Special Operations (Ret.) Viet-Nam era veteran and Desert Storm combat
Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, USA (Ret.) Author and Fox News Strategic Analyst
Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter, USN (ret)
The Honorable Rick Santorum
The Honorable Joseph E. Schmitz, former Inspector General, Department of Defense
Kelly Shackelford, Lead Counsel for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Liberty Institute
Carlton Sherwood, Pulitzer, Peabody Emmy Award-winning journalist. Producer/writer “Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal.” Vietnam Marine combat veteran.
Lt. Colonel W. Thomas Smith Jr., USMC (ret) S.C. Military Dept., counterterrorism expert
Lt. Colonel Steven K. Snapp, USA (Ret.) Delta Force Combat Veteran of Operations “Just Cause” and “Desert Storm”
Captain Charles J. Stuart, Jr., USN (ret)
Michael E. Thornton, USN (ret) SEAL, Medal of Honor Recipient
Colonel Cary Trafton, USAF (Ret.) President of SigmaCor, LLC
Major John Peter Tristani, USMC (ret)
Harlan Twible, USN (ret) Survivor/USS Indianapolis
Major General Paul Vallely, USA (Ret.) Chairman and Founder Stand Up America
Lt. Colonel Allen B. West, USA (Ret.) Congressional Candidate, District 22, Florida
Corbin A. Wyant, retired daily newspaper publisher
Tim Ziegler, co-author of “To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media defeated John Kerry”
Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (ret) Author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will — Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields”