Afghanistan My Last Tour

Internet connectivity has been like a roller coaster lately.  Despite paying $90 a month for private Internet, it hasn’t been reliable.  This creates a challenge for me to post my blog entries.  The connectivity at MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation Center) isn’t much better either.  The other night it took an hour to send 2 pictures to my wife.  Normally we are limited to 30 minutes, but if no one is waiting, you can stay on longer.  Thursday night I briefly talked to a Tampa Tribune reporter about this topic.  He was writing a story about military and social networking.  Just recently rumors have spread about cutting off access to websites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

This DoD photo appeared in Wired with no additional information about its origin

The uncaptioned and undated DOD picture in the Wired.com article (by Noah Shachtman published on July 30, 2009) is a bit misleading because the soldier appears to be using a laptop in a tent.  I seriously doubt this is a government system.  It might surprise some of my readers that I would support the ban with a caveat that there should be exceptions.
Maintaining the morale of the troops is extremely important in a combat zone.  One of the biggest morale multipliers is being able to communicate with family and loved ones.  Prior to the adoption of computers, soldiers relied on snail mail and telephone calls.  During DESERT STORM era, we utilized email because these other social media websites weren’t in existence.  But now, we have a large variety of mediums to choose from to communicate with our families.  If I understand the articles circulating on the webcorrectly, the DOD is trying to protect government resources from hackers and increase bandwidth.  I personally don’t think security is a real issue because the same message can be sent via email.
As such, I would support this ban for the following reasons.  First, active duty military should not be using government resources to post on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.  This is why we have MWR centers or private resources offering these services.  Secondly, if military personnel are using these sites during duty hours, then they are not being productive at work.  These sites slow down the bandwidth making it difficult to process official business.  It’s already frustrating that we wait several minutes for official sites, emails, briefings, etc to download.  But it’s even more irritating when you find out the reason is because personnel are downloading unofficial pictures or using social media websites.  Lastly, the ban is only targeted at the social media websites and not at email which is easily accessed.
Earlier I mentioned about a caveat or exceptions.  The only exceptions I would support are the troops who are stationed in remote combat outposts who have scarce resources and cannot connect to private Internet, use cell phones, etc.  They do not have running water, cook their own food, wash their clothes in a barrel and use bottled water to take a mini-shower.  Their only lines of communication are usually satellite communications using government resources.  Provided it doesn’t interfere with the mission or security, these troops should be allowed to use government resources to access these sites.   Regardless, we will still follow the guidance published by DOD and our commanding officers.

Scorpion found at the library-tea shop location

On a side note, while working on the library-tea shop project one of the ANA soldiers found a live scorpion.  He wore gloves and insisted on giving me a gift.  The scorpion attempted to sting him and he tossed into the air.  Omid my interpreter is deathly afraid of these arthropods and jumped back leaving out a girlish scream. Not wanting to insult my host, I found a water bottle and the soldier stuffed it through the circular opening.  I think he broke off the metasoma (tail) in doing so.  This is the second scorpion I’ve seen since being here.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | Afghanistan, Deployment, Facebook, multimedia, MySpace, photography, Twitter, U.S. Air Force, war