Stripping Away First Amendment Rights?

I was put into complete shock after reading an article in The New York Times titled: Pentagon Keeps Wary Watch as Troops Blog

It scares me to think that we would strip basic 1st Amendment rights from the men and women of our armed forces. I realize why the Department of Defense is concerned with the huge interest in blogging, as well as other social media outlets - security, OPSEC, etc. However, how else are our troops going to be able to relate to the citizens of the United States? How else will they tell their story while deployed? After eight years of sending these honorable people away, I think the least we can do for them is give them an outlet to express what they're going through. If we limit what they can do on government computers, how will those that cant afford to bring personal laptops on deployments be able to communicate with those of us back in the United States?

The government should be excited that the military is becoming familiar with these new aspects of social media. The military has always seemed to be outdated with communicating to civilians or anyone in general, and this could be the big break! If we can allow soldiers to post on their blogs, or their twitters, or their Facebooks, it gives other people a chance to empathize with them, and relate to them. We need to close the void between soldiers and civilians, and this could be a giant leap in that direction.

In one of my public relations classes today we discussed the fact that good public relations is not only emphasizing the good, but recognizing the bad. While the DOD might be concerned that allowing anyone to blog from a government computer could result in the public seeing some negative view points about the war, they must recognize that the public has the right to know about every feeling towards the war, not just the positive ones. If we don't allow the public the ability to hear about both sides of what soldiers are feeling, how are they to make an objective decision about their feelings towards the war?

The last thing I have to say in regards to the article, and this situation, is that if the military hopes to keep gaining new members each year, and keep the members it already has, each branch needs to be taking advantage of these new social media outlets to reach out to people. For too long has the military kept things secret, or encouraged that every soldier is strong and emotionless. We have a chance to give our troops a voice, lets not take that away from them. They deserve that and so much more.