On Combat Veterans and Blogging

When I started blogging about politics and the military about nine months ago, it was mostly as a way to organize my thoughts. It gave me a place to rant where I wouldn’t have to upset my family and friends with repetitive, PTSD-induced complaints about how, “…no one around here pays any attention to detail,” and the like.

Over those nine months, I’ve gotten a pretty good feel for blogging, and, as a result, VoteVets.org recently asked me to help them with getting their new blog up and running. We’re still in the middle of putting it together, but the process itself has led me to take a hard look at what it means to be both a combat veteran and a blogger. Helping VoteVets over the past few weeks has allowed me to gain some perspective on the things I’ve learned since I started writing on the internet.

With that, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of them:

Military bloggers are hard to find.

Military culture is based on discipline and this culture is implemented through a top-down hierarchy. Because many lower-ranking troops have more expertise in certain areas, the military allows for advice to flow from those on the bottom rungs to those above them, and it usually comes in the form of technical guidance or tactical recommendations. The culture rarely values the personal opinions of those lower-ranking individuals. Thus, when active duty troops leave the military and become veterans, they often retain the same active duty mentality — that unspoken taboo against speaking out.

That’s why finding veterans who write online is still a relative rarity, given the large number of internet-savvy troops. Trying to find military bloggers — either veterans or those on active duty — has been tough. I’ve found that the perceived stigma associated with speaking out is a tough nut to crack, and it permeates the highest levels of the military. For example, in the June 25 issue of the New Yorker, General Antonio Taguba (who conducted the Army’s Abu Ghraib investigation) spoke out for the first time about being canned by Rumsfeld for his role in trying to bring accountability to the Defense Department. Even now, this retired two-star general was apprehensive about doing so. He was quoted by Seymour Hersh as saying, “I know my peers will be angry with me for speaking out….” However, the very fact that so few troops do speak out or blog is what gives such power to the voices we do hear. People often aren’t expecting it. Thus blogging magnifies the opinions of the troops who do it.

Military bloggers provide progressives with much-needed national security credentials.

Much of mainstream America still believe that the Republicans are strong on national security despite the fact that the Bush-led government has totally destroyed the military. These are the people who believe that Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t hesitate to personally invite Osama bin Laden to Washington for “peace talks.” And while we know this is nonsense, it doesn’t change the fact that national security is entrenched as one of the few remaining strengths of the Republican Party in the American mindset.

Anti-Bush military bloggers can change this because Americans — both Democrats and Republicans — listen to combat veterans. A single soldier willing to speak out on a major political blog like Daily Kos can have a huge impact on how people view the Party. I have seen this personally on a number of occasions: A soldier will post an article in the “diary” section, only to have it swiped by the editors and plastered on the front page of the web site within a few short minutes. The editors do this because they know what it means to have Iraq veterans speak out on their behalf. Not only do veterans give the Democratic Party credibility on defense issues, but they give progressive media outlets credibility on the topic, too. This is because Americans know that actual Iraq and Afghanistan veterans understand more about the situation on the ground in those countries than the pundits delivering “news” in the mainstream media.

Think of the dynamic involved by looking at what VoteVets did recently. They paid a half million dollars to run three commercials featuring three different Army generals in a number of contested congressional districts. It was all over the news for a week. Now, when a hundred generals come out in support of the Commander-in-Chief, no one pays any attention. When just three generals publicly oppose him, it becomes headline news. That power trickles down to the lowest-ranking (but well-spoken) private in the blogosphere.

Blogging is an excellent way to network troops who oppose administration policies.

I’ve found a number combat veterans floating around the blogosphere looking for a home on the web. Many of them seem uncomfortable in a world of editorials, away from guns and order and discipline. But they’re there for a reason: they were in combat, and now they’ve got something to say.

The military can be a daunting place for the opinionated person. Often, a soldier can feel like he or she is the only one in the unit who hates the President, or who thinks we should start pulling out of Iraq next week, despite the fact that they are all more or less on the same sheet of music. Blogging can change that. It can give them all an opportunity to link up, share their ideas, and then turn those ideas into collective action.

Often, I come across people who are still surprised at meeting an outspoken soldier in the progressive blogosphere, as if the two were mutually exclusive. I tell them that there’s no reason why a person can’t be environmentally friendly, socially liberal, and pro-choice (or some such combination), while at the same time supporting a strong military. A military is simply a tool, nothing more and nothing less. No matter how large and powerful a military becomes, it can be used for good or ill, depending on who’s in charge. Thus, I see no paradox in advocating for a robust military. And I certainly have no problem with stealing away from the Republicans their very last bit of self-respect by capturing the military’s voice and using it to make the military — and the world — better, not worse.