Insomnia ([info]insomnia) wrote,
@ 2005-08-25 23:59:00
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PatrioTurfing.
Some of you might have heard about "astroturfing", which is the creation of phony grassroots organizations by lobbyists.

Well, looks like the DoD is cooking up their own variety of astroturf -- which I am dubbing patrioturfing -- with Public Affairs officers in the military contacting highly-watched military bloggers to link to Centcom's website and suggesting stories for bloggers to post in order to counter all that annoying "freedom of the press" that's still going on, despite the Bush administration's best efforts to crack down on it.

From an email received by Patriotboy:


-----------------------

I am a Public Affairs Officer writing from US Central Command. I would like to inquire about the possibility of you posting a link to our web site. I see that you are covering a lot of different types of stories in a lot of countries. I would like to get some of the stories out that are happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. This is the area of responsibility for CENTCOM. Due to the nature of your blog, and the wide variety of information you cover, your blog is ideal for news stories. I have attached a couple of postings* that have been used by other Bloggers,
please let me know.

Thanks for your time.

Here's some graphics to assist.*

Central Command Website: US Central Command

Brian M. Anderson

1LT Brian M. Anderson MS, USAR
CENTCOM Public Affairs Officer

-----------------------

...and yes, I know it's not a hoax.

I just hope that the soldier in question wasn't ordered to do this, because it's actually harmful to what he's trying to accomplish. The trick is to be helpful, informative, to build trusted personal connections with others, and to be as honest and factually correct as possible. Something like this, which is little more than spam, doesn't work, never has, and never will.

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[info]tsjafo
2005-08-26 10:13 am UTC (link)
"Something like this, which is little more than spam, doesn't work, never has, and never will."

Unfortunately, this kind of thing actually does work, especially on those who inherently trust the government and the military. An ex-GI from small town, back woods U.S. might question this kind of information after having dealt with the military and understanding how things go, but it is unlikely he'll trumpet how much bullshit this type of thing is because his friends and neighbors just wouldn't understand.

This is an instance where the expression "familiarity breeds contempt" really means something. The more you know, the more you distrust appearances. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" strikes terror in the hearts of anyone who's ever had to deal with them.

I'm not saying the government is evil, it's just a huge, insane juggernaut rolling over anyone not nimble enough to get out of it's way, with enough pockets of good sense to refute reports of it's worthlessness.

Unless someone has run across, or been run over, by military or governmental hypocrisy, they are likely to believe anything they are told officially. After all, inertia is easy and the alternatives, sometimes difficult research to find the truth, the fear and outrage upon discovering governmental excess, the loss of innocent, these are hard, so why bother?

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[info]insomnia
2005-08-26 10:24 am UTC (link)
It works until it comes to light, at which point it's quite harmful. An increasing number of Americans distrust not just the things that the Bush administration says, but that the military says as well, and things like this only reenforce those beliefs.

What the military needs is independent credibility. If it doesn't have that with the American people, how does it expect to get that with the Iraqis?

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tsjafo
2005-08-26 10:39 am UTC (link)
"What the military needs is independent credibility."

Amen! GI's have done many, many wonderful things, there are many, many success stories out there. But people who have dealt with the military have learned to distrust the official news releases because, like much of the media now days, any relationship official reports have with reality is purely coincidental.

Independent credibility is not easy to come by. The denizens of the Pentagon were horrified by the suggestion that military retirees be used as recruiters, thereby freeing up active duty members for more important services. After all, even though there is no shortage of old farts willing to lie to young people to get them to join up, enough would tell the truth that recruiting problems would be even larger than they are now.

“Ask a vet” is a slogan that got buried quickly.

As far as the Iraqi people go, the U.S. doesn’t demonstrate much care nor respect for it’s own citizens, why would it care for what it considers a bunch of unwashed heathens who can’t even be bothered to learn a civilized language. After all, they can always find a mouth piece to trot out to the press who’ll sing their virtues.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
We are the military.
[info]swingland
2005-08-28 12:30 am UTC (link)
They play FoxNews in the chow halls in Iraq. I spent 10 months, while trying to eat a decent meal, looking up and seeing Billy O'Reilly telling me what was going on over here and how I should thank my lucky stars for it. Its always surreal when they play the bullshit while you're trying to eat. If I didn't love food so much, I might have not put up with it.

Independent credibility for the military means people like us, the folks who actually work for the war-machine, lending it. In order to do it, I suppose we'd probably need a whole lot more to report on that would lend a positive light. The truth of the matter is that some very shady dealings have and continue to persist in matters of foreign policy and for those of us who have to deal with that policy, or enforce it, we tend to develop ideas of our own as to its effectiveness. This is detrimental to developing a "uniform" layer of credible reporting. It would also help if there were less sociopaths placed in positions to influence the lives and well-being of others, but thats a whole seperate matter altogether.

It is an avalanche of bullshit they feed to us and the people of the US. Its effective because there's so much of it, its impossible to just move out of the way and down-right impossible to stop it altogether. Sometimes I try to explain to my mom or my dad whats going on over there, but everytime I begin to touch on the greater details, they get lost. Its a harsh reality to discover your culture, your economic structure and your government operates off of disception and misdirection. Especially when they hope to retire in the next 20 years only to find out their 401(k)s never really existed.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]lafinjack
2005-08-26 06:14 pm UTC (link)
"Freedom of speech" technically doesn't exist in the military.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
amen
(Anonymous)
2005-08-26 08:29 pm UTC (link)
mark, are you really surprised by this development, especially after that email i received yesterday? DoD is simply targeting blogs because they know the truth is getting out that way and they (currently) have so little control over them.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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