The End of Milblogs
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
There was a lot of energy expended last week over the issuance of a new Army regulation (AR 530-1) on operations security (OPSEC).
Much of it started with Noah Schachtman’s misreporting on the regulation. I pointed outon haystack’s post on the subject my doubts about the Armageddon nature of the reporting.
After some mulling over of the subject I have concluded that Matt at BlackFive was right on his initial take, but for the wrong reasons. This regulation may very well spell the end of what milblogs represent if not of their actual existence.
Read on.
Milblogs have given us the unique opportunity to understand how war looks to those soldiers (I use this term to include all soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coasties participating in the Long War) on the front lines of the Long War. Unlike the dry and untimely letters of the past, the interactivity of the blog, the speed with which comments are registered on events, and the ability to provide images and video to enhance the narrative make the milblogs an indispensable part of the war history. Most importantly, it provides an unvarnished, unspun, worm’s eye view of this war.
I have no doubt that there are many senior officers in the military services and officials in the Department of Defense who feel threatened by this real time reportage. We can’t lose sight of the fact that what you are dealing with here is a huge and often stultifying bureaucracy that often seeks to destroy that which it can neither understand nor control. There is no doubt that the Army Regulation has upped the ante for both Army milbloggers and their commanders and this regulation can be used as a blunt instrument by an obdurate chain of command to belabor the head and shoulders of someone who has displeased them. But there is equally no doubt that the regulation does nothing to control blog content outside specific OPSEC considerations, and even then only if they are brought to the attention of someone in authority.
My fear is that a meme has been unleashed. Noah Schachtman’s story states:
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.
I’m afraid this statement will be regurgitated again and again as proof that milblogs are doing nothing more or less than simply parroting the line of whatever administration is in power because now we KNOW the blogs could not have been written “without first clearing the content with a superior officer.”
Milblogs have been critical in maintaining both information on and support for the war in Iraq. We don’t have to rely on the usual bevy of disgruntled troops for commentary on the mission. We can get if from a lot of people who understand why we are at war in Iraq. An inartfully worded regulation and an inaccurate report may very well have destroyed that credibility forever.
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The End of Milblogs 8 Comments (0 topical, 8 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I think its interesting that we can trust these soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and coasties to understand and excute the mission but for some reason not trust them to guard OPSEC at the same time. "Loose lips" have always sunk ships but at some point one has to trust the men and women doing the job to do so responsibly.
My reading of the reg is not as stultifying as that of the press, but I think you hit the nail on the head that the real damage is that the reg has given the MSM yet another opportunity to claim that they are the true source of war knowledge, hammer the administration that they are not telling the truth and point to the "approved" reporting from the troops as further evidence of duplicity.
John
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Liberals: Alchemists who have mastered the ability to transmute Lead into a denser form of Lead
but I think the actions on blogs like RedState already has, and will continue to correct the misinterpretation, so long as we don't lose faith. We know only OpSec needs to be cleared for publication, and that no thinking soldier would ever knowingly break OpSec while in the field. When reading the reg initially, my reaction was that it was a reinforcing memo for OpSec, not a new policy.
and superior officers will err on the side of caution, factsheet notwithstanding. It's bumpf. Rather than making it easier for milbloggers, the Army went the other way, which is a stupid thing to do when we're smack dab in the middle of an Information War, especially when there's an MSM filter that trots out false and skewed and misleading storylines. Our own postings from Jeff and Victoria are testament to the effectiveness of firsthand accounts.
who writes "slugsite", your second link, but he's just wrong probably because he's never seen the previous OPSEC reg.
The reg actually, in fact, really truly does nothing about milbloggers at all. What it does is raise their profile as a potential OPSEC violation. It is no harder at all, in any way, to be an Army milblogger today than last week.
We talked about this in detail on Saturday at the milbloggers conference. Chuck Z said it best, "write as if you assume your commander, your mother, and the Wall Street Journal are reading
it and you won't go wrong." He's right.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
The email restriction seemed like a possible morale buster to me. But hopefully a commander uses some discretion before reading an email to a wife, for example...
does not cover communications between private parties, so I don't know what you are talking about here
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
haystack's 12th:
Conservatives (and Presidential Candidates especially) shall offer no aid and comfort to the opposition in times of legislative conflict (and ensuing political campaigns).