In Iraq since December, 2007, the pseudonymous "LT [Lieutenant] G," described firefights and combat patrols and tribal meetings and the banality of life on base with equal measures of sarcasm, aggression, introspection, and attention to detail. Within months, his site, Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal, became one of the military's blogosphere's best-loved voices from the war.
Some of that popularity came from LT G's taste for the absurd. He described his platoon's predilections for Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Aladdin soundtrack; a local shiekh's love of Suzanne Sommers workout videos; and his moment of absent-mindedness, when he had to be reminded to put on pants before he headed out to the warzone.
But Kaboom's mile-a-second monologues could be as searing as they were funny. And LT G himself was often the target:
I had given the order to kill. Haughty enough to condemn two individuals to The End because they had been stupid enough to be fucking seen in a war of shadows. Somewhere in the time-space continuum, the boy who cried after my first fistfight - not because I was hurt, but because I thought I had done something to upset the instigator and still didn't understand the concept of bullying - hung himself with a calendar rope.
LT G also showed an unusual, almost-reckless disregard for military decorum, openly questioning his superior officers on-line. A May 1st entry described how his captain's slow-moving plan to nab a Shi'ite militia leader ultimately let the the extremist slip away. In a post from April 1st, LT G vented about a mission that never seems to end, "because higher said so. And no, it doesn’t matter that they said so from an air-conditioned TOC [tactical operations center] ten klicks away on an eight-hour shift while we sweat through hour 16 of this clusterfuck."
But in a posting on May 28, LT G later acknowledged, he went too far. His superior officers asked him to become the company XO, or executive officer. LT G demurred. The response: "an illogical backlash from higher, acting like a spurned teenage blonde whose dreamboat crush tells her point-blank that he prefers brunettes."
Fine, I’m not going to make you do it. (Even though I spent three days trying to do so.) But you are now on my shit-list, and I want to fuck you over for daring to defy and defying to dare. A bullshit tasking will eventually come down the pipeline, and I got a rubber stamp with your name on it. And yes, I know your performance has been outstanding, and we have consistently rated you above your peers, at the top echelon. Doesn’t matter now.
A month later, on June 27th, LT G announced to his audience that "due to a rash posting on my part, and decisions made above my pay-grade, I have been ordered to stop posting on Kaboom, effective immediately... it was too much unfiltered truth. I’m a soldier first, and orders are orders. So it is." A day later, his fiancee wrote that LT G had been ordered to "delete his blog. I guess no longer posting wasn't good enough."
In the spring of 2007, the Army passed new regulations about what soldiers could and could not say on-line. G.I.s were ordered to "consult with their immediate supervisor... prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum." The purpose of these reviews, ostensibly, was to make sure that the soldiers didn't breach operational security, or OPSEC. But some observers worried that the rules could be used to clamp down on G.I. dissidents, as well -- that "weak leaders would use it to shut down strong, but perhaps stubborn, subordinates," as blogger, retired officer, and Army contractor John Donovan later put it.
Like most military bloggers, Kaboom's young officer scrupulously observed the Army's OPSEC rules. Patrols were described after the fact, and without identifying details. Officers, towns, and local shiekhs were all given pseudonyms. He didn't even use his fellow soldiers' nicknames, making up new ones for the blog, instead.
And so LT G's many admirers smelled the work of a "weak leader," when his blog was extinguished. "Too much reality about the bureaucracy and games played. You are out there getting shot at, and they're worried about having their mindgames and egos exposed," one howled. "Major suck. Major foul," cried another.
But some, like Villainous Company's "Cassandra," thought LT G had it coming.
He admits that he broke the rules…. And yet, many of you are defending an example of an officer who knowingly broke the rules, openly displayed contempt for his senior officers, and then, when the rule he broke was enforced, didn't have the good grace to take his lumps silently but rubbed their noses in it PUBLICLY.
If I had been the field grade in question, the easiest and least embarrassing course of action for me personally would have been to counsel the young man quietly and deal with the post LATER. However, allowing an officer to deliberately defy regulations and deliberately do what he did is not really an option a responsible senior ought to contemplate.
Donovan, a Kaboom fan, says she has a point. He wrote, "LT G should have saved the details of that post for his memoir."
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