President Joe Bidens designation of Camp Hale as a national monument reminds us of the brave men of the 10th Mountain Division ski troops, who fought the Nazis in the Italian Alps during World War II.

The Monument should also remind us of some other men who also trained at Camp Hale, and who fought a regime that was even more genocidal and totalitarian than Adolf Hitlers. The Tibetan resistance movement, the Chushi Gangdruk, are also heroes of Camp Hale.

Mao Zedongs Chinese communist regime invaded Eastern Tibet in 1949, and Central Tibet in 1951. Resistance had begun immediately, and it got off to a good start, thanks to Tibetan culture.

Tibetans had a long tradition of autonomous local government and a thriving arms culture. Whether Buddhist or Musliam, every Tibetan was expected to be a proficient marksman. The Buddhist monasteries held huge arsenals. Even the poorest beggar would have a large Tibetan knife.

Resistance intensified in 1955, when the communists announced a gun registration program. The Tibetans recognized is as a prelude to gun confiscation, which the communists imposed in 1957.

As the Dalai Lama later recalled, I knew without being told that a Khamba [eastern Tibetan] would never surrender his rifle he would use it first.

Although the Tibetans were putting up strong resistance to the Chinese communist imperialists, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been reluctant to get involved. Earlier in the 1950s, the Agency had been duped into attempted support for planned anti-communist uprisings in Poland and Albania, only to be entrapped by sting operations of the communist secret police.

By the summer of 1956, the CIA had realized that reports of the Eastern Tibetan uprisings, with impressive initial successes, were genuine. Since the early 1950s, the CIA had been in touch with the Dalai Lamas elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, the rebels principal ambassador and contact with the outside world, who urged Free World support for the rebels.

So in 1957, several Tibetan freedom fighters were exfiltrated for a pilot program of training in guerilla warfare.

At first, the program was conducted on the Pacific island of Saipan, which is part of a U.S. overseas territory, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The program was soon expanded, with a permanent training center established at Camp Hale, Colorado. The snowy, mountainous, isolated terrain near Leadville was relatively similar to Tibet.

The Tibetans and their American trainers got along very well. One instructor remembered, They really enjoyed blowing things up during demolition class, but when they caught a fly in the mess hall, they would hold it in their cupped palms and let it loose outside.

Tibetan Buddhism is based on ahimsa, compassion for other living beings. In the Tibetan view, compassion includes forcible resistance to evildoers who are attempting to enslave and murder. The example was provided by the Bodhisattva Manjusri. A Boddhisatva is an enlightened being who remains on earth to help others. Manjusris flaming sword cut through the roots of ignorance including communism and its worship of Mao.

Man for man, the Tibetan freedom fighters had always been vastly superior in motivation and firearms proficiency to the conscripted Chinese serfs of Maos so-called Peoples Liberation Army. With the advanced skills disseminated by the Camp Hale students, the Tibetans all the more formidable. The Tibetan freedom army, the Chushi Gangrdruk, liberated hundreds of thousands of square miles of Tibet. The Chinese imperialists dared not venture beyond their military bases, except in large convoys.

But by the fall of 1959, Maos army had gained the upper hand, for the same reason that other barbarians had eventually conquered the Roman empire: overwhelming numbers. In the meantime, the Tibetan resistance made it possible for tens of thousands of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, to escape to India or Nepal.

Against overwhelming odds, the Chushi Gangdruk continued their war of national liberation. While they made conditions difficult for the Chinese occupation arms, they were not able to take and hold territory. After President Lyndon Johnson was re-elected in 1964, he shut down the Camp Hale training program.

Because the Chushi Gangdruk made it possible for the Dalai Lama and the rest of the Tibetan diaspora to escape, almost everyone today has heard of the Dalai Lama and the plight of colonized Tibet. Thanks to the Tibetan diaspora, and to the resistance army that made the diaspora possible, the great monasteries of Tibet have been reestablished in India, and more people than ever before have learned insights from the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

Meanwhile, within Tibet, the authentic Tibetan Buddhist religion is being perverted, like all religions under communist control, into an empty shell where compassion for sentient beings is replaced with submission to the will of the communist party, which worships the false gods of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. Against which the true faith of Tibetan Buddhism does and always will stands strong.

Let us celebrate and draw strength from the Camp Hale National Monument. May the example of the 10th Mountain Division and the Chushi Gangdruk bless and inspire people of all faiths who sacrifice all to resist evil.

David B. Kopel is an author, attorney, gun rights advocate, and contributing editor to several publications.

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GUEST COLUMN: Remembering the heroes of Camp Hale - Colorado Springs Gazette