Milblogs Boost War Effort

Iraq vet and DANGER ROOM pal Phil Carter has put together one of the smartest, sharpest rebuttals yet to the Army's clampdown on soldier-bloggers. Sure, the military has all the right in the world to regulate its troops' speech, he argues in today's Slate. But "military blogs, articles, and e-mails have... helped the war effort." Here are a couple of snippets from the piece. But if you're interested in this issue at all, you owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.

...Soldiers' voices may also help our military machine function better, as well. To be sure, militaries require discipline, and they work most efficiently as ordered societies in which individuals work together as a team to accomplish a mission with minimal griping. But the squashing of dissent can go too far. In Iraq, where I served last year in the volatile Diyala province, I saw military hierarchy and culture conspire to spin or block negative or pessimistic reports from traveling up the chain of command, or to silence dissenting views before they could reach the generals in Baghdad...

It's by circumventing organizational filters that blogs and soldiers' writings allow unconventional and controversial views to percolate up to senior leaders and the public... The new Army regulations would likely squelch dissents... Such discussions and Web sites are now increasingly restricted to Army personnel only. This policy constricts the Army's marketplace of ideas by preventing civilians from participating in professional discussions about strategy and tactics.
Such rules are particularly myopic for an interagency effort like counterinsurgency, where the best ideas may come from academics, contractors, or State Department employees.

The war against al-Qaida and Islamic fundamentalism is as much a war of ideas as a war to be fought by our military. Right now, even Donald Rumsfeld agrees that fight is being won by al-Qaida. One cannot run a Google search for
Iraq without calling up dozens of jihadi videos and blogs (in Arabic and English) that portray the war from the other side's perspective. By imposing these Draconian regulations on its own troops, the Army has taken its best soldiers out of the fight and ceded this ground to the enemy.

Meanwhile, ABC News' investigative team examines a related controversy: The Army's demand that the Federation of American Scientists remove from its website a copy of those icky new operational security regulations. And the Worldwide Standard digs into the strange, strange story of how an American soldier's Russian-language blog (yeah, you read that right) has become big news in Moscow, too.

ALSO:
* Military Defends MySpace Ban
*Military Hypes, Bans YouTube
* Petraeus Hearts Milblogs
* No More YouTube, MySpace for U.S. Troops
* Pentagon Whispers; Milbloggers Zip Their Lips
* Clarifying the Blog Rule Clarification
* Army to Bloggers: We Won't Bust You. Promise.
* Army's Blog Rebuttal
* Stop Those Leaks!
* Strategic Minds Debate Milblog Crackdown
* Milblog Bust: AP Gets Snowed
* Army: Milblogging is "Therapy," Media is "Threat"

* Urban Legend Led to Army Blog-Bust?

* New Army Rules Could Kill G.I. Blogs (Maybe E-mail, Too)

* Reporters = Foreign Spies?

* Army's Info-Cop Speaks
* Al-Qaeda Ramps up Propaganda Push
* Al-Qaeda Propaganda at New High