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Milbloggers With Attitude

Bloggers can be a critical bunch. When they don't like what they see or hear in the world around them, they let everyone within click range of their piece of the Web know it. And when they get together at a blog conference, then the rhetoric can really get harsh.

That's what happened Saturday at the first annual Milblog Conference in Washington. About 200 soldiers, veterans, family members and assorted others who gathered to celebrate the military blogging community spent much of their time chastising the media, denouncing peace activists and lamenting the military's lukewarm response to the blogosphere.

The panelists and attendees directed their firepower first and foremost at the media. Novelist and military commentator Austin Bay set the stage as master of ceremonies. He said the nonstop television news cycle "does to war, natural disaster, crime and celebrity trials what pornography does to sex," adding that the milblog community exists "to get the story [of war] right."

The gripes against the "mainstream media" amplified from there:

-- Matt, who left the military in 2001 and now blogs at Blackfive, blasted Newsweek for not telling the story of a friend killed in combat -- an episode that moved him to start blogging.
-- Author and panel moderator Robert (Buzz) Patterson ranked the media among a "fifth column" in America that aids and abets terrorist enemies.
-- Steve Schippert of ThreatsWatch reached into the past to condemn Walter Cronkite for what Schippert called biased reporting about the Tet Offensive. He said such reporting turned people against the Vietnam War but argued that it "can never, ever happen again -- not ever -- because of milbloggers."
-- Chuck Ziegenfuss, who was injured in Iraq last year and blogs at From My Position ... On The Way, mistrusts journalists so much that he regularly searches the Internet for their articles before granting interviews. "You kind of have to control them as much as they're trying to control you," he said.

The subject even arose in the mid-morning panel discussion dubbed "Milblogging Family Style." "We can't have a milblog conference without mainstream media discussions," said Andi, an Army wife and organizer of the event who blogs at Andi's World.

Carla of Some Soldier's Mom displayed a recent copy of her local newspaper, The Daily Courier in Arizona, and complained that it contained "not one word" about U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "And then they wonder why there are milblogs and why we need additional sources of information," she said.

The criticism was not limited to the conference room at the Academy for Educational Development, either. Milbloggers unable to attend the event took their jabs at the media in a Web chat that was projected onto a screen throughout the conference.

As disgusted with the media as milbloggers are -- one said reporters are "stigmatized" in the eyes of many military people and called them "the enemy" -- they were even more hostile toward anti-war protestors. They are known as "moonbats" in milblog parlance.

At least twice, panelists called attention to "Concrete Bob," an active member of Free Republic who was in the audience. He played a key role early this year in forcing the group Code Pink Women for Peace to relocate its protests outside Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The protests prompted the milblog community to swarm both virtually and physically. Concrete Bob received a rousing round of applause when Andi praised him for "kicking Code Pink to the curb".

"The people who are in that hospital are not the policymakers," said Ziegenfuss, who spent time at Walter Reed recovering from his injuries. "They are the policy enforcers. ... There's a time and a place for everything, and outside a hospital is not the place."

The milbloggers' rap against the Pentagon was more respectful and subdued but no less assertive. They think the military brass are blowing it big time when it comes to the blogosphere, both by failing to embrace bloggers and by pondering potentially onerous rules for blogging by soldiers.

The military certainly has taken note of the blogosphere. At least one official from U.S. Central Command, for instance, attended the conference. That is just one example of attempts at blog outreach that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned in a February speech.

The Defense Department research wing that created the Internet also is looking to cull information from foreign-language blogs. And just last week, the department's press service announced that the Defense Science Board this summer will study the military impact of blogs.

But bloggers see room for improvement. John Donovan of Argghhh, a milblogger at the event, said in an interview that the Pentagon right now is just sending "obvious pieces of recruiting propaganda" that milbloggers are rejecting. "They're frankly clumsy about it because they still don't understand blogs," he said.

Bill Roggio of The Counterterrorism Blog and The Fourth Rail offered this message to the Pentagon public affairs team: "Accept us like you accept the media. ... Allow your people to talk. The risk you take with [operational security] is miniscule compared with the benefits you can get from engaging the milbloggers."

Engaging them is only half the equation, though; the other half is not quashing them. Panelists repeatedly urged milbloggers to remember one key principle before posting content to a blog: that their words can be read by enemies like al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. That means milbloggers need to write responsibly.

Missteps may well come, the panelists said, but the military should not respond by regulating blogs. "If the Army restricts bloggers," said Matt of Blackfive, "all you will have are ... dissident bloggers who are willing to take a risk."

John Noonan of OPFOR offered another idea instead: "We will help you and do it in a less abrasive way."