Losing the Information War

To be blunt, one reason conservatives look like the minority is because other than talk radio, we lose in the war of words. Another reason is that the conservative leadership allows themselves to be silenced.

When President Bush speaks out without a Washington D.C. scriptwriter, he connects with people. Like this, for example:

Bush signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, the father of Marine Corps Reserve Cpl. Dustin Derga, who was killed in Iraq on May 8, 2005. The elder Derga spoke with Bush two weeks ago at a meeting the president had with military families at the White House.

Derga asked Bush to promise to use the pen in his veto. On Tuesday, Derga contacted the White House to remind Bush to use the pen, and so he did. The 24-year-old Dustin Derga served with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion 25th Marines from Columbus, Ohio. The five-year Marine reservist and fire team leader was killed by an armor-piercing round in Anbar Province.

One of the things that has hurt Bush the most is his refusal to respond to the slime and hysterics that the Democrat American Communist Party throws at him. And the Democrat American Communist Party, seeing that they can say whatever they want, have come forth with libel and outright lies contantly repeated. It's sickening. What's worse is the fact that the Republicans aren't calling them on it. For g-d's sake, all they have to do is look around the blogosphere for some of the most complete refutations of the Leftist bullshit, but they can't be bothered. They're spineless.

The Army isn't helping itself out either. Via Malkin:

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

If you're having a war of ideas, then you need to get your side of the story out there. The military is slowly preventing this. Much bad juju will ensue, because it's been the military itself who has plainly stated that we should not leave Iraq.

Why in the name of all that's holy would the military want to silence that? My command knows that I blog about politics. They also know that should OPSEC be involved, I cannot and will not blog about it. That should be all that's required.

Feh. You know, I'm getting really tired of defending people who won't stand up for themselves. The military, congresscritters, the President, all of 'em. Thank God Bush ain't running in 2008.