This article was inspired by Anat Shenker-Osario during her appearance on Michael Podhorzer's August 28, 2025 Substack Podcast.
She told a story of Colombia FARC rebels. I cannot do it justice in this short space, so go ahead and listen to her in the original, here.
The gist of the story ASO told is this. In order to get the FARC guerilla soldiers to come to the table and negotiate peace, organizers asked the soldiers' mothers for baby pictures. Part of their campaign was to hang copies of these photographs on clothes lines in the jungle where the guerrillas would see them. The photos carried messages from their mothers.
"Before you were a guerilla soldier, you were my daughter" or "my son." "Before you were a soldier, you were my child."
And they saw the photographs. Even when the guerillas came upon these photos and the photos were of others, the photos were close enough to their own reality to hit home. Because of this and because of many other things as a part of an organized campaign to get them to come, they came to the peace table.
This story is a reminder regarding the people in the National Guard and the people in the Marines, so far.
Many of these people are unwilling.
They can be court-martialed if they disobey legal orders.
So far the regime is careful not to issue illegal orders; so far the regime's orders are written carefully with questionable legality at worst. So far.
As these words are written, it is the feast day of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist on the Catholic church's calendar. No-one foresaw that Herod would demand the severed head of John the Baptist. But he did. He ordered his soldiers to cut off a man's head because the man had offended someone in the regime.
Looking back to today and not the unknown future which has not yet been determined, it bears repeating that many people in the National Guard and Marines (so far) are unwilling to be sent where they have been sent inside the United States.
How do we respond? What do we say to them?
What we say should not be negative but positive. We shall not assume that these people will do evil but we will remind them of their oaths to do good.
The National Guard in particular is made up of citizens who have willingly signed up to help others -- us -- in our time of need. Anat Shenker-Osorio said that these words of hers need to be copy-edited, but I think they stand up very well as they are: "In America we rely on the National Guard in times of crisis, in times of sorrow. You are the people who rescue us from the flood. You are the people who come to put out the fire. You are the ones that come from the very best of us to serve in our time of need. And it is your turn to honor your oath, to ensure that you serve the American people and the Constitution."
The regime's reliance at first on federalizing the State National Guards may become its Achilles heel, a terrible mistake that leads to its eventual downfall. So using the words of ASO or words like them, we will tell the citizen-soldiers among us, most of whom are far from home and unwilling to be here at this time and in this place which is not their home: "We look to you, we count on you in times of crisis, and today we ask you to stand in solidarity with us and ensure that we can make this a place where we protect our freedoms, our families, and our futures."
Protect our freedoms.
That is what we will do. That is what we will say. And we will hope. Not because we know that the outcome will be good. But because what is to come has not yet been decided. And we can help to decide the outcome.
A version of this article was published on Substack.
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