America’s North Shore Journal has always supported the United States military’s efforts to publicize its efforts in the War on Terror. We are often the only non-military publication to report on a story.

During the years we have been engaged with the military press efforts, we have often noted the poor quality of some of those efforts. We have pointed out the many instances where military news sites went stale for weeks or months. We have asked why reporting American combat losses is so important and the reporting of enemy losses forbidden? We have tried to carry the stories and photos of enlisted personnel and lower grade officers all the while that the military P/R machine is turning out stories and photos of General officers shaking hands and receiving meaningless awards.

The United States military has been, as best, lackadaisical, with its reports on the men and women awarded medals for heroism. Far too often it is impossible to find the official story of the heroism that resulted in a medal award.

The military has allowed unit commanders to dictate the quantity and quality of the material released to the public. There is no consistency across services, across the Central Command, across Iraq or Afghanistan. There is certainly no consistency across leadership as changes in release policy are made every few months with many entirely opposite of those that preceded.

Military leadership has seemingly adopted the notion that news aids the enemy. Descriptions of heroic actions, battle reports and enemy losses are all considered too valuable to allow the enemy to see. The leadership appears to have forgotten that the enemy was there. We are not concealing anything from them that they do not already know.

Without being physically present in Afghanistan, we must rely upon the various military sources for news.

The NATO force, the ISAF, reports allied deaths and regional conferences. There is little or no day to day information about the activities of the thirty or so nations now working in Afghanistan. The site is filled with reports of ISAF troops killed but rarely is there any sign that the enemy has also suffered losses.

Combined Joint Taskforce 82 is currently the United States independent component in Afghanistan. It formerly was CJTF-101.The site just went from August 3 to September 21 without posting a new story.

The Central Command site highlights speeches and meetings.

Screen capture of the Central Command website. Click for a larger view.

Is it really a function of a military site to report on the speeches of the Administration when there are so many military stories out there?

The United States Department of Defense runs a site called the Digital Video & Imagery Distribution System. DVIDS seemingly was intended to centralize all of the press releases, videos and photos produced by the Department of Defense and the services. It does but it can only list what it receives. Not all material produced makes it to DVIDS, and some that is newsworthy today won’t show up for a week or so. It posts 4-5 stories a day about Afghanistan but could handle lots more if the people on the ground were writing them.

If ordinary Americans do not know what is happening in Afghanistan, or if they only hear and see one sided reporting, the support for our efforts there will evaporate. When bodies come home, the one question that everyone asks is “Was it worth it?” While some of us try to answer that question, it is really the mission of the United States military. With all the money and people and effort put in to documenting change of command ceremonies, couldn’t the military find just a little time to tell the American people why they should continue to support the war in Afghanistan?

The United States military is far more innovative than it is given credit for. Here are a few examples:

Multinational Strategic Airlift Unit Activates in Hungary

Very few countries can afford to purchase the largest aircraft used for troop transportation and equipment transfers. The C-17 Globemaster is the heavy lifter in the United States Air Force but only a handful of countries are flying them other than the U.S.

On July 27, 2009, that began to change. The Strategic Airlift Capability program was activated at Pápa Air Base, Hungary. Twelve nations have joined together to create a joint heavy lifting capacity that
will be based there.

Army Training Embraces Web 2.0

Imagine an international company with over 500,000 employees and hundreds of manuals full of policies and procedures. Imagine that it requires all of the men and women in its executive training program to blog, Twitter and create a
Facebook page. Imagine that it has some of its hundreds of manuals on a wiki and open to change and rewriting by any of its employees from entry level to the CEO.

You do not have to imagine such a company. It already exists and is called the United States Army.

Army Reserve’s Employer Partnership Initiative

Imagine you are an employer. What if you knew of a place where you could find the following qualities in every prospective employee?

• discipline
• leadership
• ability to work under pressure
• tested drug free
• state of the art job skills

What if you knew of a place where every single person you might interview had these skills? Would you partner with that place and actively seek to hire some of those people? Of course you would.