My Townhall.com column is on the Army's new policy concerning milblogging.

For an opposing view, see Joe Carter's response to the widespread objection to the new rules.  I hope Joe will consider the arguemnts I make in the column.  He's right to worry a great deal about Operational Security, but there's no public record of milblogging leading to loss of life or comrpomise of a plan, though therte is a huge record of the benefits the public has derived from the open policy that has been in force to date.

Nor do I think Joe is correct to wonder why the center-right is suddenly not trusting the generals.  I doubt very much if "the generals" ever sat around and thought this through.  I also doubt if the generals think much about the milbloggers' role in the information war at home.  I have interviewed enough of them and senior DoD leadership to know that the pros and cons of milblogging isn't a priority and for the reasons one might expect --they have got a war to win, and the issue of blogging just doesn't seem all that important.

Which is why I write in my column that the military doesn't have enough experience to make this sort of judgment --because no one does.  It is a new thing for the battlefield to be both virtual and for its American participants to have immediate access to the homefront.  With the new policy of preclearance and caution, the military has put its fears ahead of the well documented advantages gained by the old policy, and it appears to have done so without the least bit of engagement with the American public over what it thinks of the benefits of the old policy, and has done so on a timetable the suddenness of which doesn't inspire confidence. 

Last week Robert Bluey of Heritage wrote a fine Townehall.com column on blogging the war.  "I interviewed some key personnel at DoD," he wrote me yesterday. "No one mentioned anything about a change in policy -- and I specifically asked!"