Blog Wars - Views from the Front Line

Part 3 – Voices From The Front

It’s one thing to see what’s happening with the eyes of those at the front, but those snippets of action are only the tiniest fraction of the big picture. To find out what is really going on, or at least as close as you can get without going out there yourself, you have to ask the people that are really there, or have been there.

Salam Pax, the now famous Baghdad Blogger, was one of the first and most popular voices from Iraq during the invasion and subsequent occupation, but he is by no means the only Iraqi with access to the internet and a desire to be heard. The Iraq Blog Count site contains links to over two hundred blogs written by Iraqis about what is going on in their country.

While these are very often well written and for the most part are regularly updated, there is a reason why Salam Pax was cherry picked from the internet to become a writer and commentator in his own right. His own blog has not been updated since August 2004, but for an impartial, on-the-ground view of how an eloquent yet otherwise ordinary Iraqi experienced the invasion and removal of Saddam’s regime, it is unbeatable.

For a view from the soldiers themselves who are currently serving then the first port of call should really be Milblogging. This site serves as a hub for blogs of serving military personnel. Just as with the Iraq Blog Count there are too many blogs to really appraise them all in one go as they vary greatly in quality and in the politics and status of those who write them. One of the critical differences between the blogs of active service personnel and the blogs of private citizens, however, is censorship. Just like the letters home during WW2 and other conflicts the top brass gets the final say on what is said by its men and women in uniform, so don’t expect to read anything too controversial from Milblogging's contributors.

To get unfettered opinions from soldiers you really have to look for the blogs of those who have finished their tours and come home. There is often a world of difference between what veterans have to say and what serving soldiers say about the war and the events that they witness. This is particularly the case if the veterans in question leave the army under a cloud. Some blogs worth a look in this regard are those of Colby Buzzell and Fred Minnick. The freedom of these individuals to post whatever they like more than compensates for the lack in up to the minute information, particularly in a situation like Iraq where very little has changed on the ground for maybe a year or more.