Top General: Let Soldiers Blog

A leading general and former top military spokesman in Iraq is pleading with the armed services to let troops blog and post to YouTube. Too bad the video site is banned on military nets, and Army rules squeeze military bloggers, hard. Greg Grant notes, politely, that Caldwell's "recommendation that appears to run counter to Pentagon policy."
Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV became an internationally-recognized figure in 2006 and 2007 as the face of the American effort in Iraq. He commanded the 82nd Airborne Division before, and now heads the Combined Arms Center and Fort
Leavenworth -- one of the Army's main intellectual centers. (Gen. David Petraeus held the job before taking over the Iraq war.)

In a Small Wars Journal blog post, Caldwell says that, in a struggle where perception is often as important as bombs-and-bullets conflict, soldiers ought to be encouraged and equipped to wage that information war on their own. And that means "get[ting] onto blogs and [s]end[ing] their YouTube videos to their friends and family."

Not everyone in the military shares that view. YouTube is officially banned on military networks. Many influential blogs are blocked. Stringent regulations, read literally, require commanding officers to review each and every item one of his soldiers puts online. And in televised commercials, screen savers, and flyers, troops are told that blogging is a major security risk -- even though official sites have proven to leak many, many more secrets.

Read excerpts from Caldwell's essay, after the jump.

*First, we need to *Encourage
Soldiers to “tell/share their story”. Across America, there is a widely held perception that media coverage of the War in Iraq is overwhelmingly negative. We need to be careful to NOT blame the news media for this. The public has a voracious appetite for the sensational, the graphic and the shocking. We all have a difficult time taking our eyes off the train wreck in progress - it is human nature... [B]ut when it comes to their men and women in uniform, they also have a very strong desire to hear their personal stories. They want to know what it is like, what the Soldiers are experiencing, and how the Soldiers feel about their mission. That is why we must encourage our Soldiers to interact with the media, to get onto blogs and to send their YouTube videos to their friends and family. When our Soldiers tell/share their stories, it has an overwhelmingly positive effect.

*Just playing lip service to encouraging Soldiers is not enough. Leaders need to not only encourage but also **Empower
subordinates. A critical component of empowering is underwriting honest mistakes and failure. Soldiers are encouraged to take the initiative and calculated risk in the operational battlefield because we understand the importance of maintaining the offensive. However, once we move into the informational domain, we have a tendency to be zero defect and risk averse. Leaders have to understand and accept that not all media interactions are going to go well. Leaders need to assume risk in the information domain and allow subordinates the leeway to make mistakes. Unfortunately, the culture is such that the first time a subordinate makes a mistake in dealing with the media and gets punished for it, it will be the last time *ANYONE in that organization takes a risk and engages with the media...

*Finally, we need to **Equip Soldiers to engage the new media... [W]e need to trust them enough to give them the tools to properly tell/share their stories. The experience of trying to gain YouTube access in Iraq and even back in the United States is a prime example. A suggestion for consideration might be equipping unit leaders with camcorders to document operations but also daily life. The enemy video tapes operations and then distorts and twists the information and images to misinform the world. What if we had documented video footage of the same operations which refuted what our enemies say? ... If we wait until we see the enemy’s images, we are being reactive and we have already squandered the opportunity. *

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