IN THE NEWS
I'm deliberately reading two complementary books at the same time. Michael Doubler's Closing With The Enemy is a study of how US forces adapted their strategy in the European theater of World War II. Charles MacDonald's Company Commander is the first-person account of one of those soldiers, a US Army captain's experiences during the Battle of the Bulge and the drive into Germany.
The European Theater of Operations (ETO) did not give the US Army many opportunities for collective reflection and adaptation about tactical and operational levels of strategy. Instead, field officers like MacDonald, the author of Company Commander made adjustments on their own. Occasionally, different units compared notes about what was working and what wasn't, such as in the vexing problem of how to attack through the hedgerow country of Normandy. However, there wasn't much of an official program, or even a staff college-like environment, for a more general analysis of lessons learned. The pace of US operations, the makeshift facilities in liberated territories, and other factors left US forces to their own devices.
Not surprisingly, the most successful innovations ran along the organizational lines of least resistance. The quality of collaboration among the different elements of combined arms warfare varied widely, depending on the units involved. For example, the constant re-attachment of armored forces at the battalion, regiment, and division levels made it impossible for particular infantry and tank units to learn how to work with one another. Add the rudimentary communications technology of the era, and you get situations like those described in Company Commander, in which only the bravest soldier would run under fire to a tank just a few yards away to relay a simple request to fire on an enemy position. In contrast, the better-established relationship between infantry and artillery made it easier for US forces in the ETO to collaborate, and make doctrinal changes as needed.
The US Army had a serious learning challenge in the Vietnam War (see The Army And Vietnam and Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife for details), and it is facing a similar challenge in Iraq. Many of the same factors are complicating the task of strategic innovation. (Other obstacles, such as institutional indifference to counterinsurgency, and the resistance to serious debate over America's Iraq strategy at the top reaches of the chain of command, aren't mere accidents of history and geography.) Therefore, it's critical for the Army to develop mechanisms for testing innovations, and then communicating which seem to work. At the very least, the Army should not stand in the way when the troops develop these mechanisms on their own.
Today, this mechanism is nicknamed "milblogging," the online journals that US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are writing. To its credit, the US Army has tried to come to grips with milblogging without eliminating this medium altogether. After alternately discouraging or trying to shut down milbloggers, the Army has developed a largely reasonable policy, leaving it up to the milbloggers and their commanding officers to ensure no truly sensitive information appears on blog posting.
It's not surprising that a completely open communications medium, outside the control of military censors, might give military higher-ups a great deal of anxiety. However, operational secrecy doesn't necessarily have to be at risk. It's worth remembering what sort of secrets the US military needs to keep in a war like the one in Iraq:
Deployments: The location, strength, and mission of an individual unit is normally kept secret—in conventional operations. This information gives important hints about where American forces might be massing for attack, and where some parts of the line are weaker. However, in counterinsurgency operations, there are no front lines, and most units are based in the same location for an extended period. If you want to find out where units are deployed, public resources GlobalSecurity.org will tell you, so any deployment information is largely superfluous.
Methods: The US military may not want Iraqi insurgent groups to know how American troops fight. Even though most insurgents don't speak English, they might have access to translated versions of what the milbloggers are saying about technical, tactical, and operational details. This risk is somewhat mitigated by the fact that many terrorist and guerrilla groups are already sharing information in public Internet forums, such as standard web sites, discussion forums, and chat rooms (not to mention private communications, like e-mail and cell phone conversations, that may be intercepted.) In war between "networks," combatants often have to balance ease and security in their communications. Iraqi insurgents may already understand the measures that milbloggers are describing, through direct observation or espionage. The value of sharing successful strategies among US forces may be higher than the risk of revealing to insurgents what they already know.
Message: Military and civilian leaders always want tight control over the representation of how well the war is going. In counterinsurgency, fourth generation warfare, call it what you will, the political message is even more important. However, that's not an excuse for lying to your own citizens: if the milbloggers describe an Iraq or Afghanistan that's very different from what top leaders are describing, it’s the responsibility of those leaders to explain the discrepancy. It's also worth remembering that "the message" is supposed to be directed primarily at Iraqis, not Americans. They already live in the thick of what the milbloggers are describing. Unless the milbloggers are knuckle-dragging troglodytes (in which case, they shouldn't be serving in an army fighting a counterinsurgency war), the milblogs might even help Iraqis better understand the Americans occupying their country.
Fears about milblogging have been largely overblown. In World War II, the conflict described in Closing With The Enemy and Company Commander, soldiers kept diaries that might have fallen into enemy hands. Although their grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' mail was censored, troops today freely use e-mail and instant messaging to their families and friends in the United States. Milblogging is just another communications channel, one that can serve an important purpose for the military itself—not to mention how it can inform the US public about the real state of the Iraq war, or preserve important primary material for future military histories of this conflict.
[If you haven't been reading the milblogs, check out Just Another Soldier, American Soldier, My War, Black Five, or Afghan Warrior. You can follow the links to other milblogs from any of these.]
