Budding Hemingwayesque Blogger Muted by Military

Reno Army captain told to shut down blog from Iraq | www.rgj.com | Reno Gazette-Journal

I was unaware of the blog discussed in the link above until reading yesterday's online article from my hometown newspaper. It begins with the following:

Where I come from, people don't really join the military. It's the modern Americana, where layers of white-collar contentment shield fears of a higher unknown and blueblooded pipedreams. Reno may sound like a unique place -- and it is, at least the inner urban part that wavers between the rustic and the bizarre -- but decades of suburban buildup has eroded that authenticity. The military, generally, does not come into play for this youth."

-- Lt. G, Nov. 17, 2007

The month before his Iraq deployment, Matt Gallagher started a blog.

Entitled "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Blog," his postings ranged from mission details to immortality and what would be included on a war soundtrack. To protect his identity and location, he went by the pseudonym "LT G" (for lieutenant), dubbed his platoon the Gravediggers and served in a place he called "Anu al-Verona."

Gallagher, a Reno native, announced June 27 that he had been ordered to stop posting to "Kaboom" because of his May 28 post: "The Only Difference Between Suicide and Martyrdom is Press Coverage."

Well now, aren't you grateful that you can blog and post today? However, it would be simplistic for American bloggers to think that this freedom is protected because our troops are fighting in Iraq. What do you think?


The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
-Ernest Hemingway