The Military and Blogging

I apologize for my long absence. I’m in the middle of my Career Level Schooling, which will prepare me for command, and frankly I’m finding it tough to even find time to read blogs, much less post anything. My Google Reader inbox has had over 100 unread posts in it pretty much since we left North Carolina. Since that’s been pretty much my primary source of news in the past, I’m consistently about 2 weeks behind everybody else. Speaking of which, how’d that whole election thing work out?

We had a visit from LTG Caldwell yesterday to talk about operating in the information domain. LTG Caldwell is the CG of the Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, and has been one of the strongest advocates, certainly among General Officers, for allowing and even encouraging service members to blog. He even requires students at the Army’s Command and General Staff College to write blog posts while attending the course.

LTG Caldwell was a dynamic and entertaining speaker, who started off by showing a video that spoofed his performance at press conferences while serving as chief spokesman for Multi-National Force – Iraq. I can see why he appeared on The Daily Show; he’s unpretentious and a funny guy to boot. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to speak with him; I was eyeball-deep in writing a company Operations Order for class, so I hustled back to the classroom to finish my work.

For someone who dabbles in the Milblogging community, LTG Caldwell’s message was nothing new. Many of us have been saying similar things. Some of my fellow captains in the crowd were more skeptical. One in particular asked about Scott Beauchamp’s essay in The New Republic, and how to deal with Soldiers who write material that makes the unit and/or the Army look bad. This mirrors the concerns that a lot of commanders have about allowing their Soldiers or Marines access to post blog posts or Youtube Videos. After all, just take a look at the two geniuses who posted a video of throwing a puppy off a cliff near Haditha. This concern weighs just as heavily as concerns over the release of sensitive information on the internet. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the general really addressed the concerns expressed.

I would answer that it’s actually pretty intuitive, if you think about it as a leader. If you spend most of your efforts restricting your Soldiers’ activities, then it is the bottom 10% of your unit, the “shitbirds”, that will rise to the surface. If you ban blogging, then only the Soldiers who have issues with authority will write blog posts. You allow your quality Soldiers to rise to the surface by empowering them and giving them tools with which they can succeed. Similarly, if you encourage and reward Soldiers for writing blog posts about your unit’s mission and accomplishments, then you will have no problem with negative stories. If someone like Beauchamp should crop up writing articles or posts that make your unit look bad, then you have a long list of articles or posts written by other Soldiers to show that your unit is not characterized by one bad seed. In the meantime, you’re continuing to spread the message about what you and your Soldiers are accomplishing.

I think we’re still a ways off from gaining acceptance for the idea of encouraging Soldiers and Marines to write their own stories as blog posts, but to see a General Officer who has embraced the concept and is actively pushing it on the next generation of field grade officers is very encouraging. Maybe one day we’ll see the concept of unit blogging integrated into our public affairs and information operations.

Thoughts?