Subject: New "Crusaders" Name for SPEC OPS Combat Unit and New "Crusaders” Patch
Date: April 25, 2023 at 5:21:46 PM MDT
To: (U.S. Active Duty Special Operations Military Commander’s E-mail Address Withheld)
RE: New "Crusaders" Name for SPEC OPS Combat Unit and New "Crusaders” Patch
Dear (Commander’s Name and Rank Withheld),
Thank you for the several phone calls we had today regarding one of the subordinate Special Operations (SPEC OPS) combat units under your command.
As you know, several members of that unit, all of them practicing Christians, have come to MRFF as a result of a decision made by this unit’s “Team Leader” to change the name of the unit from (unit’s current name withheld) to “The Crusaders” with an accompanying new “Crusaders” unit patch to be affixed on their combat attire.
As we discussed, sir, MRFF has encountered this very same situation a number of times through the years and has always been able to justly stop it almost immediately in its tracks. These successes include forcing a U.S. Marine Corps fighter squadron and a U.S. Air Force fighter squadron to abandon the use of the “Crusaders” name and accompanying “Crusaders” iconography on their fighter jets, uniform patches, and signs placed in their units' HQ buildings, et al.
MRFF also forced Company C-1 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to drop its use of the same “Crusaders” name and visual iconography to include a West Point cadet dressed up as a Crusader and running up and down the sidelines at West Point football games.
MRFF also stopped an Army aviation unit at Fort Rucker, Alabama, from doing the very same thing with its unit name, et al. There have been a number of other similar attempts through the years by U.S. military units to employ the “Crusader” name and accompanying “Crusader” visuals for uniforms and building signs, etc., and MRFF has been able to stop all of these.
You asked me to explain why the use of this “Crusader” name and uniform patches is wrong. Sir, let me make this very simple for you, please:
(1) Please recall that the actual Crusaders murdered countless Jews and Muslims during their many years of bloody, sectarian foreign conquest specifically engineered to conquer their enemies in the name of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and their Christian faith. The use of their name and iconography by the U.S. armed forces is as wretched as any similar use by our American military of the Nazi swastika or associated Nazi paraphernalia and/or Confederate States "Stars and Bars" from the American Civil War. MRFF has battled the use of both in our nearly two decades of civil rights activism, by the way.
(2) The use of the “Crusaders” name and accompanying visuals, such as uniform patches and unit building signs, is completely violative of (A) the “No Establishment” Clause of the U.S. Constitution; (B) its construing Federal caselaw; (C) a slew of DoD EEO/IG and related Directives, Regulations, and Instructions; the Uniform Code of Military Justice; and the foundational core values of the United States (military branch name withheld).
Sir, MRFF is NOT going to lay out any more key legal or even practical facts for you. If you do NOT immediately stop this subordinate unit under your command from changing its name to “The Crusaders” and using “Crusader” visual iconography for unit uniform patches and building signs, I swear to you that MRFF will both expeditiously and aggressively sue you and the (military branch name withheld) in Federal District Court in (U.S. State name withheld) to stop you from doing so!
(Commander’s Name and Rank Withheld), I want you to think VERY HARD about how you might try to explain this Federal litigation you caused not merely to your immediate chain of command but, especially, to the Secretary of the (military branch name withheld) and the Chief of Staff of the U.S. (military branch name withheld). Oh, and please be prepared to also explain your prospective failure to stop this “Crusader” insanity to DoD Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is already well ON THE RECORD FROM DAY 1 OF HIS TENURE as wanting to be the “lodestar” (his words not mine) for racial and religious diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Defense Department.
*BOTTOM LINE, sir: Stop your subordinate Spec OPS Combat Unit from renaming itself as “The Crusaders” and using the most repulsive and Christian Nationalist graphic possible as their new logo and uniform patch. (Have you even LOOKED at that new proposed “Crusader” art yet?!) Failure to immediately do so will land you and your command not only directly in Federal Court but also all over the national and international media with the names, ranks, titles, and installations of those responsible for this disgrace justly on full display.
Standing by for your earliest decision here, sir.
Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, Esq.
Founder and President
Military ReligiousFreedom Foundation (MRFF)
505-250-7727
