Melanie Morgan
'The Female John Wayne'

Melanie Morgan, San Francisco Bay Area radio personality and chairman of Move America Forward (MAF), has been a tireless activist in support of our men and women in uniform. Her activities qualify for our "Heroic Actions."

In addition to "passive" troop support activities like shipping goodies and cards to our service members overseas, Melanie is frequently on the front lines, standing toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose with anti-war demonstrators like Code Pink, in support of our troops, defending them against attacks by the lunatic fringe on the far left.

Not only does MAF organize shipments of gourmet coffee and cookies, gatorade and beef jerky to the troops, last year they organized a trip to Iraq for Gold Star parents. This allowed families that have lost loved ones in the war on terror to see first-hand the country their loved ones sacrificed their lives for and meet and talk with Iraqi citizens to hear first-hand their appreciation for the difference our service-members are making in their lives.

Melanie has personally visited our troops twice in the Middle East, organized over 37 TONS of care packages to be sent to our troops and helped personally distribute over 225,000 Christmas, Hanukkah and holiday greeting cards for our troops.

She's gone toe-to-toe with anti-American filmmaker, Michael Moore, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, and the radical anti-military leftists at Code Pink.

Melanie has organized countless pro-troop "tours" across the nation, working with an outstanding team of Gold Star and Blue Star family members, and military veterans who have served this nation with honor and distinction. In addition, Melanie and MAF organized the "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy Sheehan" bus tour from Crawford, TX, to Washington, DC, holding pro-troop rallies in towns along the way.

Today, American Thinker published a piece by Kyle-Ann Shiver profiling Melanie Morgan as "The Female John Wayne." With their permission, we're reprinting it for you here.

Most military folks I know, even the Navy Seals and the Marines, admit that no war can be won without a lot of behind-the-scenes home-front help. Of course, there's home-front help, and then there's home-front battle.

A lot of us are cut out for the former, and do our share of helping in myriad ways. Our troop-support efforts are as varied and ingenious as is the spirit of the American people.

But only a few of us seem to be cut out for the home-front battles, those necessary confrontations with the anti-military leftists, the Cindy Sheehans and Medea Benjamins and the summer-soldier malcontents.

We ought to just call it like it is. A home-front warrior is a different breed than the home-front helpers.

They are the few, the proud, and the ferocious.

Melanie Morgan receives my own medal for our most ferocious home-front warrior.

The Female John Wayne

Morgan is no wimp, no wall-flower, no Daisy Mae.

She is the equivalent of a female John Wayne. With enormous appeal to the opposite gender, she mixes ferocity, tenacity and meets the foxhole test with feline ease. More like Annie Oakley, with a dose of Lois Lane.

As one of the co-founders of Move America Forward, Melanie has managed to juggle her duties as a daily-talk radio star with regular rumbles with the loony leftists of the anti-military crowd, from Berkeley, CA to Crawford, TX to Washington, D.C. Melanie has gone to the war zone twice, once on a speaking tour directly with our soldiers on the ground in Iraq, and again with in-transit soldiers in Kuwait.

But while most of the rest of us were still snugly sleeping, prior to 9/11, Melanie took her first trip to the Middle East, to Beirut, Lebanon in 1983. And at the tender age of 24, she learned the difference between reporting on war from afar and seeing it up close.

Of that first close encounter with war, Middle-East style, she writes:

(No, that is not a Hillary ‘mis-remembered' moment.)

When Hillary was 24, she was ensconced safely at Yale Law, planning a political future and studying defensive ploys to aid the Black Panthers.

Maybe Melanie Morgan should be running for President now, and Hillary Clinton should be in boot camp.

Taking on the Loony Left Is Not for Wimps and Whiners

I would have paid good money just to see Melanie Morgan face off with Medea Benjamin, of Code-Pink notoriety.

Medea Benjamin is a mousey little woman, a real rabble-rousing lover of dictators everywhere, who takes great pride in being arrested for uncivil behavior, and seems to love taking advantage of our national tolerance for idiocy. Ferocious Melanie has taken her on, personally, in Berkeley and elsewhere. No one ever need worry over telling the two apart. Medea will always be the one spitting on or burning our flag, while Melanie is backing Medea into a corner and verbally annihilating her disgraceful disrespect for our Country.

When I asked Melanie recently about her passionate convictions and their personal toll, she wrote:

I couldn't have said this better myself, and that's ground I rarely give to anyone.

Of course, Melanie is also a writer herself.

(Is there anything this woman cannot do?)

She writes a weekly column for World Net Daily and co-wrote the book American Mourning, with Catherine Moy, another of Move America Forward's stalwarts.

Getting to know Melanie Morgan has been a very humbling experience for me. I like to think that I am good with words and that what I write is some sort of public service. But when I meet someone like Melanie, who is truly moving mountains on the home front of this war, without any compensation or pomp or celebration, I am reminded that we must all do more.

Move America Forward is paying public tribute to Melanie this Saturday in San Francisco, and I wish I could be there. But more than a celebration of Melanie's home-front heroism, this dinner is a fundraiser for Move America Forward's never ceasing efforts to defend our troops and their recruiters stateside. While our taxes go to pay the ACLU to sue every Tom, Dick and Harry that offends them, we citizens must voluntarily foot the bill and do the work to defend our right to raise an army.

Maybe only a few of us can be the ferocious home-front warriors like Melanie Morgan, but all of us can and must do more.

As Lt. Col. (ret) Steve Russell told an audience in Nashville, TN, as part of the National Heroes Tour:

"We cannot afford to allow the home front to become our exposed flank in the war on terror. This war must be won.
And it must be won decisively."

Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She blogs at Common Sense Regained and welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver@gmail.com.

Melanie Morgan has done all of this out of the goodness of her heart - with no compensation from Move America Forward. Instead, Melanie has donated thousands of dollars of her own personal money to MAF and a number of other pro-troop organizations.

On Saturday, May 10th, MAF is holding a tribute event for Melanie, called "A Salute to Melanie Morgan." It's part of a $100,000 fundraising drive for Move America Forward. All the proceeds raised from the fundraiser will fund MAF's summer pro-troop activities, as the organization will be stepping up its efforts at a critical time in the war effort, and a critical time in the nation's dialogue and debate about our troops and their missions.

MAF urges every red-blooded American to contribute to this "Salute to Melanie Morgan" and help MAF continue its efforts to support our troops, both at home and abroad. Thank you.