Freedom of Silence

An article published on military.com states that the Army is starting to clampdown on blogging servicepersons in the great name of OPSEC (Operations Security). Whereas the argument at face value makes sense--the opposing side does read any accessible information about the U.S., including anything that hints at the morale of the troops, being ex-military I have enough sense to know that this has less to do with OPSEC and more to do with domestic PSY/OPS. One of the understatements of the decade is that the war in Iraq is not exactly popular now, and the "enemy" that the Army is truly concerned with is the American media. It would be even more difficult for the Bush administration to hold on to the sliver of support it does have if some ambitious reporter just happen to take a soldier's thoughts and share them with the general population. Whereas I genuinely understand that certain soldiers cannot discuss details of their day at work, the handful of blogs I have seen appear to be just an outlet for stress. What the military fails to realize is that if they block this stress outlet, they really will have a problem on their hands in the future. People underestimate the power of emotion. It is emotion that fuels the drive for these soldiers to push forward with their mission and if not checked, these same emotions will churn until an outlet becomes a necessity. If unchecked, those emotions could manifest into violence, whether internalized (suicide) or expressed (this runs the gamut). Whereas I realize there are Beetle Baileys in every group I sincerely doubt there are that many soldiers stupid enough to put sensitive information on the web. If any are doing that, then I am willing to contend that for many of them it was probably on purpose. If this is not the case, then the Army needs to focus more on sensitive information security training instead of taking away the only quiet space these soldiers probably have left.