You’ve probably been somewhat confused in recent years about what the mission of the American Civil Liberties Union is.

Its raison d’etre is supposedly to “defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

So, you’re thinking, maybe the ACLU will come to my defense when the federal government says I have no “reasonable expectation” of privacy on a cell phone.

Maybe later. Right now, the ACLU is more worried about protecting terrorists from America.

The organization is attacking America’s use of unmanned drone attacks against terrorists, most recently utilized against terrorists holed up in the hills of Pakistan. It is demanding proof from the U.S. government that the drone attacks are legal.

“The American public has a right to know whether the drone program is consistent with international law,” the organization said.

Frankly, it is — but, more importantly, it is consistent with one’s God-given right to self-defense. Terrorists in that region have spawned attacks on forces in Afghanistan; America itself has been attacked. Congress authorized the use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hiding just over the Pakistani border is no defense.

The ACLU worries about civilian deaths, and so should we all. But it is the terrorists themselves who are violating international law and wartime convention by not only attacking civilians unprovoked, but then taking refuge among their own civilians, inviting collateral damage and, obviously, luring the ACLU to plead their case.

The ACLU, clearly, isn’t concerned with Americans’ civil liberties so much as any left-wing cause that comes along, however unrelated to its supposed mission.

Its bizarre foray into foreign policy, sadly enough, is no better thought-out than most of its interloping in domestic affairs.

The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle