~~ Ronald Reagan ~~
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The End of Military Blogging? Is the Army Nuts?
Michelle Malkin is carrying a story this morning with some very bad news:
Via Malkin via Noah Shachtman:
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.
Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq—the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.
The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.
Michelle calls this Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! and I could not agree more. The blogoshpere, particularly the rightosphere is about the only place the Army and the military as a whole are getting positive press. It is the one place where the military can get the real story of Iraq out to the public. Think about it. When is the last time you saw the MSM carry a positive story about Iraq or about the military?
Pamela at Atlas Shrugs says:
Silencing the blogs. This is bad. For everyone of us. The military is going to leave all of the war reporting to the jihad loving mainstream media? We’s screwed for sure!
I remember Bush advising a military mom at a press conference to “use the blogs” to get their stories out. Shakes head.
And she posts a suggestion:
Atten hut all military blogggers: feel freee to post anonymously at Atlas.
We would like to join her in this and make this blog available as well. To participate, you need to register first, but if you would like to be an anonymous millblogger, send me an email with your true details and I will help you set up a registration name that will protect your identity and give you posting priviledges. And since I was a military wife during my husband’s twenty-six year career, I would be particularly happy to have those heroes of the homefront blog their experiences as well.
And you need to read the whole post with the UPDATES and the comments at Blackfive. These are the guys who really know what it is all about and how important bloggers are to the mission.
Next, be sure to read Major Elizabeth Robbins award winning paper about military blogs “Muddy Boots” - which General Petraeus praised. It is pure genius and I’m glad Noah linked to it. I believe that Major Robbins is or is on the way to somewhere dangerous.
The Bottom-Line to the this bad piece of regulation: The soldiers who will attempt to fly under the radar and post negative items about the military, mission, and commanders will continue to do so under the new regs. The soldiers who’ve been playing ball the last few years, the vast, VAST, majority will be reduced. In my mind, this reg will accomplish the exact opposite of its intent. The good guys are restricted and the bad continue on...
Operational Security is of paramount importance. But we are losing the Information War on all fronts. Fanatic-like adherence to OPSEC will do us little good if we lose the few honest voices that tell the truth about The Long War.
Instead, the US Army should adopt Major Robbins recommendations, allow for unit bloggers, and restrict bloggers with the same rules as the military gives embed reporters (with UCMJ exceptions). Maybe, then, we can start winning some battles on the information front.
RELATED:
“Looks like our conference suddenly became even more interesting....”
“BULLET, MEET FOOT.”
The US Army has promulgated a new set of rules for operational security that puts restrictions on the ability of soldiers to write about their experiences in combat theaters. In fact, the change will be so restrictive as to have the practical effect of eliminating active-duty milbloggers, and silencing the voices from the front who have most actively promoted the war effort.
...
However, no one has any evidence that milbloggers have violated Opsec orders in their communications. The one example offered in Wired is an old story about how people noticed a lot of parked cars and an uptick in pizza deliveries to the Pentagon on January 16, 1991, which presaged the imminent activation of Operation Desert Storm. That seems rather picayune, not to mention outdated.
If that’s the extent of their concern and the extent of the violations, then they have sacrificed a powerful voice of support for the Army and the mission in favor of an almost-useless silence. The author of the new rules, Major Ray Ceralde, claims that it won’t kill milblogging, but the regulations make it so cumbersome that it will be impossible to maintain blogs—or even e-mail.
- Confederate Yankee sums up:
Milblogs can and should be among our strongest assets is a war that is as much about perception as execution. Thousands of military bloggers, describing everything from excruciating boredom, to the rush of surviving the shot that just cracks past, milbloggers can serve not only as our first line defenders, but our first line of information.
If we want to win a war that is as much about information as it is about actual counterinsurgency, few can win the American public better than the American soldier or Marine communicating directly to the American people from their hearts.
I hope Army brass realizes this mistake before their concerns over operational security loses the war by not communicating “why we fight” to the American people.
But not quite as well as OP-FOR’s “Aw Hell”:
There is no word in any of the world’s languages that can effectively capture the pure stupidity of this decision. Political fights need political warriors. And make no mistake, this war is a political fight. It’s like stripping the Army of tanks before they’re supposed to invade Germany.
And a great suggestion from Hugh Hewitt (H/T Instapundit):
Senator Richard Shelby said on my show tonight that he is very skeptical of the blogging ban. The Washington Post has an article up on milblogging as well. I doubt very much if the Pentagon saw the reaction coming. Suggestion: Suspend the new policy asap and convene a panel of senior brass and civilians to focus on the blog issue but also on the information war more generally. This pratfall could become the occasion for the Pentagon to ask why we are getting rings run around us in the information war.
And for two very different views, check out Macsmind and Patterico.
Posted by Sara
on 05/02/2007 at 02:34 PM in Military - Terrorism-War-Foreign Turmoil -
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