Operational absurdity

The Army is making it rough on those of us who advocate a stronger military role in the war of ideas. As if it wasn’t hard enough already to get the truth out about the war effort and generate public support for a truly noble effort, the Army is making it even harder.

“Operational security” is the supposed reason behind the latest brilliant stroke in the war on terror: A total ban on emails, blogging and other electronic communication from the troops in the field. Unless, of course, those messages are censored first.

There’s a lot to be said for cracking down on the sending of messages, images and other electronic data that harm the war effort. And certainly there’s a huge security concern about undisciplined disclosure of information. But World War II ended before many of our generals were even born, and it’s time for the military to understand the age of the wired grunt and adapt accordingly.

And implement far more rigorous counterintelligence procedures and practices, which is a crux of the real problem. (But don’t tell that to Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper, or you’ll get fired. Gen. Clapper doesn’t believe in counterintelligence. But he does believe in snooping through employee e-mails to root out political correctness. Remember when he was head of DIA?)

With few exceptions, the military’s IO and public affairs policies are primitive enough as they are, even though we have all the technology and human talent we need. Mindless, blanket censorship of all electronic communications isn’t going to help things.