Personal, unedited account of a dangerous mission to rescue 55 children from human traffickers

The article below is the personal, unedited account from Mark Mabry of his experience with Operation Underground Railroad and their mission in Colombia. Mark is a former employee of Mercury Radio Arts and TheBlaze, and he has volunteered time to work with OUR. 

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By Mark Mabry

To keep the deal alive, Raul ratcheted up the intensity of his texts:

I have a special gift for you Jefe. I call her “Lady”.

 She is ‘fresca’.

She is a virgin, just for you.

She is eleven.

 Pablo responded in kind:

 I cannot wait.

This could be a beautiful arrangement. 

Raul writes back:

I will not fail you boss.

I believe God has put us on this path together.

 Pablo agrees:

So do I. 

Big child trafficking deals are actual deals just like slave trading two centuries ago. Text messages are the new quill and paper. Cell phone pictures are the new auction block.

Here are some facts of this deal.

Fact One: Pablo is actually Paul H., a billion dollar fund manager from the United States. He’s in his forties with three teenage sons…Two weeks ago he visited Colombia and was introduced to Raul at a rooftop restaurant.

Fact Two: Raul is about 31. He’s handsome, networked, and smart. He used to be involved in cyber fraud and also worked for a Latin American drug cartel until being placed under house arrest. Shortly after he was released in 2012 his cartel was wiped out by rival cartels in Mexico. He survived, disappeared into Colombia, and started to freelance in high-margin child sex trafficking and tourism. He’s a staple of the Cartagena party scene.

Fact Three: Lady, the eleven year old, really is a virgin. For over a year, Raul has fed her a steady diet of hard porn, live sex demonstrations, drugs, alcohol, promises reserved for the rich, and threats reserved for the captive. The technical term for this training is “grooming”.

Sex with a virgin child costs around $1000. After that, her rate will decrease with age. Her ability to service several clients a day will have to increase in order to capture the precious few years of youth.

10:00 AM, Saturday Oct 11:  Baru Island, Colombia.  Pablo waits for Raul at a remote beach house. He stands on the dock outside, his blonde hair is fund-manager standard, high and tight- he looks like Richie Rich, thirty years later, in resort wear.

10:05 Three boats pull up. Raul disembarks the 40 foot speedboat with a group of adults.  He waits for the two tour boats that were traveling in the convoy to dock and empty out. Raul finds Lady and walks her down the dock to the large room designated for the kids.

Lady’s form fitting shirt reads Sleepy Head andis actually a pajama top. Her black Colombian hair is streaked with amateur pink dye. Lady is skinny, flat chested, and walks without any hip action.

Raul, wearing jeans and Sunday shoes, has only met Paul one other time, on a Cartagena rooftop restaurant about two weeks ago. Prior to that, all of the contact was with Tim, the “party organizer”who diligently learned about all of Raul’s ‘inventory’even traveling to Cartagena on numerous occasions…all to serve “Jefe”.

Raul finds Tim and Paul.

You will love Lady, but I have additional gifts for you Jefe. says Raul.

Behind Raul’s smile was a gift of four, 11 year-old virgins, (3 girls and a little boy). By today’s rates, it’s a $4000 goodwill offering.

Fuego, Raul’s street man, prods the kids toward the house…to await the party.

Paul’s 15 friends make catcalls from the beach. Music blares from a Bluetooth speaker on a card table. Some of the guys play poker and drink. One guy flies a remote control drone out over the ocean, but most of them are content to watch and snap pictures on their iPhones.

In all it was a 54 victim parade- most of them were 9th grade or under.

Raul motions to Tim, his American contact, who was brokering the deal. Send them back to prepare for the party.

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Three beautiful American women escort the children back to a large room with several beds. These were the same three women who greeted and inspected the kids at the shipping dock in Cartagena 45 minutes prior. It’s customary at a child sex party to have someone to groom and clean the kids -babysit them- between sessions.

Fact Four: Tim has organized child sex excursions for about a decade. The price tag on this trip would be about $65k, not including $20,000 for a full day with 54 kids. (The actual price would have been $24,000 had Raul charged for the additional for virgins).

But before you jump to any conclusions about Tim, understand one more fact.

The sex excursions that he’s organized have all been to rescue the children and bust the bad guys. Tim founded Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) over a year ago, and the organization acts just like the name sounds. Prior to OUR, he worked in the Department of Homeland Security solving crimes against children from child trafficking to child pornography. But Tim wanted the freedom to move more nimbly and even to free kids outside of the U.S. government’s jurisdiction. So Tim left the government to push the issue faster. His speed to save has skyrocketed and the efficiency of dollars spent to children saved has increased exponentially. He was also now an equal opportunity catcher of bad guys, every body is game, not just Americans.

Increasingly donors have come forward and funded missions, some for as little as $15,000 and other missions exceeding $100,000. Every child has a price though, and in the dark world of child trafficking, a kid’s freedom -or captivity- most often comes down to the guy who can come up with the cash.

This was my second mission as an embedded journalist. My first mission was in Haiti, 6 months ago. I’m finding increasingly that “journalistic detachment” in matters involving the rape of children is a joke… and that the process of pealing back layers of child sex trafficking involves moving beyond the confusing exterior of 13 year old girls groomed for sex and dressed for the part. It involves seeing this evil for what it is, the same thing that it was for hundreds of years with African slaves…  flesh selling flesh.

Tim architected this particular plan from it’s inception months ago as part of the largest one-day sting operation in child trafficking enforcement history. In fact, concurrent missions were being conducted by trained OUR operatives in Medellin and Armenia, Colombia. And so far, all three missions were going exactly according to plan.

Back on the little island, the men retired to an outdoor dining area to discuss plans for a luxury hotel built for child sex tours. Paul would finance it and Raul would run it. Seven other Colombians sat at the table too.

In addition to Raul, there was an older man, a cocaine guy.

Then there was Fuego, Raul’s street guy. Nothing was too hard for Fuego to get. He wore a Che hat at the dock. Tim congratulated him on the great hat and Fuego explained, Che was a revolutionary, so am I. I’m a revolutionary dealer of the Chicas”.

(Interesting side note, Tim traded Fuego hats at the dock that morning and wore Che for the rest of the mission.)

There was a striking Colombian woman who claimed the title, Princess of Cartagena. She was about 5’10”slender with perfect ebony skin. She walked like a Colombian woman.

The Princess had her business partner too. They were both about 25 years old. A bunch of the kids were there contribution to the day. They recruit kids from poor neighborhoods with a convincing “modeling agency”scheme throughout Central and South America.

The other two Colombians, Marcos and Hector, are Tim’s street guys. They’re locals who were there to perform due diligence on Raul’s operation and report it to Tim.

Another fact, Marcos and Hector are CTI agents.

Tim, fluent in Spanish, steered the conversation where it needed to go in order to make clear the intentions Raul and his partners.

It would be Paul’s job to talk business while Tim got what he needed. So while Paul napkinned the business model, The Princess of Colombia laid down the ground rules for the man and child orgy that would commence upon arrival of the sizeable Cocaine order.

Princess’s Rule Number One:

Several girls and one man is okay.

Several boys and one man is okay.

Boys and Girls and one man is still permissible.

But, several men on one girl or boy is not allowed.

Rule Number Two: The men must wear condoms.

When pressed on the condom issue, the Colombian men backed off with a wink, but the Princess stood by her ethics.

Those were the rules.

Tim hands $10,000 worth of Pesos to Paul, who shuffles them with his thumb. Raul, Fuego, and the other Colombian traffickers stared at the money. Paul informed them that since they seemed like stand up business people, the remaining $10,000 was on its way. It would be delivered when the party started…presumably any minute.

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Back in the bedroom, most of the kids laid around. Others made last second adjustments like shaving. One boy changed into a leopard speedo. They knew the drill and were trained to act the part.

The virgins were in a different room with their American handlers. Lady was crying. The little virgin boy, face buried in a pillow, asked if anyone had cocaine or alcohol, and explained that is what they usually gave him to prepare. Jen, a trained OUR operative and deadly Krav Daga fighter, comforted him. The American women’s cover as “preppers” for the party, is standard procedure in such affairs. But these women were extensively trained in high-stress environments, their shadow role was that of comforter to the kids.

In fact, each time the 11 year olds had their moments of nervous breakdown, a woman was their to comfort them. They all sat on a bed conversing with the American women: Chelsie, Krista, and Jen. The kids were nervous expressing it through a 14 year old translator who was learning English in Jr. High.

They tried to calm the girls with assurances that they’d be okay at the end of the day. Even with the assurances however, the kids had no inkling that freedom was closing in from about a mile away.

Chelsie, is actually Chelsie Hightower, 7 season star of America’s Dancing with the Stars. She laid with her arm around one of the little girls and stroked her hair. “You’re a good girl,”she told her.

Krista, who is an RN, Crossfit gym owner, and young mother, tried to help the kids see a vision of life outside of this current hell.

Jen walked among the older kids, kept in an adjacent room, asking about their lives- all while knowing something about them that they did not know themselves. There lives were about to radically change.

Here’s another helpful fact.

Fact Five: a 30 man Colombian SWAT Team had established a 300-yard perimeter around the property. Another two boats were rapidly approaching the sand carrying 30 Colombian Army soldiers with guns drawn. C.T.I (The Colombian FBI equivalent) had replaced all of the waiters at the house and had even been on the three boats that dropped them off. Another boat full of Colombian social service and child psychologists was on its way as well.

The American I.C.E. Attaché, Fernando, stood by in Cartagena should any American support be requested. His passion for the cause is another glimmer of hope in the kids favor of which they are unaware. Tim and Fernando had worked on cases together for years.

The entire beach house was wired with mics and hidden cameras, all warranted by the Colombian government and admissible as evidence in court.

In the dining area, the sex hotel negotiations dragged on as Paul drug Raul and The Princess through the deal points yet again.

Raul, completely unaware of the approaching convoy, left the table momentarily and interrupted the girls’preparation, to show the virgins to Paul. Tim left with him.

When he reached their room, Lady was still crying.

“Wipe your tears,”Raul told her, “and smile”. She did.

Tim suggested that maybe Lady could sit this one out. She was clearly petrified.

Tim’s suggestion made Raul more determined and tension in the room rose.

Raul pulled Lady outside to see Paul. Her hands continued to shake as she sniffed, played with her long braids, and wiped her eyes.

In the dining area, she stood in front of Paul. The little boy was next to her.

“She’s okay,”Raul eyes her seriously. “She’s just excited.”

“Fine,”Paul waved them back to the room.

After the kids left, they got right back to business. Seemingly inspired by Lady’s beauty, Paul made a proposition.

“Why not $5000 for the virgins at our hotel?”he asked Raul. “People would pay it.”

“Oh yes, Jefe.”Raul nodded as he spoke.

There were other things that Raul was unaware of as well, like the fact that Tim Ballard’s sex parties always ended the same way…and that at Tim’s instruction, Paul had been stalling now for 30 minutes for operations to get in place.

In fact, Paul, both of Tim’s Colombian street guys, Jen’s husband Joe (also a deadly Krav Daga expert), and Jimi (a former Marine and the current Crossfit national brand manager) and everyone else on the island except for the 6 of the Colombian traffickers had already rehearsed this scenario. They had trained extensively for it.

And now, it was go time.

“Bring in the Vino!”Tim shouted to the waiters with a smile.

Army boats hit the beach about 100 yards away. Thirty armed agents leaped out of the boat and stormed the compound.

“Bajar en la planta!”they shouted.

Raul ran toward the beach and forrest.

Paul ran. Tim ran. Everybody scattered.

21 Beach

Raul was heading down the beach when Tim, still in character, grabbed his shirt and forced him to turn around… He ran with Raul (as if he knew a better escape route), right into the waiting arms of the several hidden CTI agents who were huddled at the doorway of the kitchen.

Soon, all of the Colombians and Americans were on the ground, legs and arms spread, faces in the dirt.

The Princess of Cartagena had collapsed on the table and audibly wept. Fuego hit the ground with a scowl. The drug guy tried to crawl under the table, but the bench was in his way.

“Who the hell called the cops? I knew you were a traitor Raul!” Tim yelled from the ground.

The groups were separated according to the plan laid out by the head of CTI, 24 hours prior. Colombian Child Protective services entered where the kids were sequestered and the American girls were taken out to join the rest of the team face down on the beach…arrested.

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The roll of the women in the mission was to keep an eye on the children and make sure that they were okay until the arrival of the local authorities, at which point they have a scripted exit.

Flashback: Days earlier, realizing that his time under cover was growing short, and that this would likely be his last time face to face with an operation, Tim lamented, “I hate that I always leave being the bad guy to the kids. I would love them just once to know that we’re the good guys. That we were here to free them.”

After several minutes, Raul and his team were escorted off the island by a Navy boat. Tim’s jump team, called Operation Underground Railroad, wiped the sand off of their faces and embraced. They were careful not to let the kids see them celebrate, as it safer  to maintain cover, but it was too late this time. Several of the girls had emerged and learned that Raul, Fuego, The Princess, her partner, and the cocaine guy were being arrested.

Inside of the room, an accidental breach of protocol, a Child Protective Services agent explained to a confused child, pointing at the women and the OUR team, “Those ones are the good guys”.  Word spread and the kids began to wander out of the room. Some asked for the restroom, only so they could come out and smile and wave at the team.

Child Protective Services quickly pulled the kids back inside the room and the jump team of Americans was ushered to the boats.

…but Child Protective Services forgot something- the window.

Walking back to the boat, the American girls passed the screened window where the youngest kids were sitting. An 11 year old came and pressed her hand to the screen…others came too.

The women and girls whispered back on forth. Smiling.

Tim approached behind the American women and was granted the one thing he’d always wanted.

One little girl kept her hand on the window and he reached out to touch it. Tears flowed down her cheeks…Tim’s too.  She probably didn’t realize the personal price Tim had paid to get her back home, and back into the fifth grade… unraped.

She is free…and so are her friends.

As the Operation Underground Railroad team boarded their getaway boats a noise rose from the house. Kids laughing. But with the revving engines, the noise changed…into kids cheering.

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Note from the Author

I was three feet from him when Tim met the little girl at the window. I had a camera in each hand. My instinct was to shoot, but something told me to keep it at my side.

So I did.

Front page image via Mark Mabry

Patriotic uprising—Why 90% say Old Glory isn’t just another flag

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day began as a political payoff to Socialist agitators

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During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

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The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.