Admiral Stavridis, I'll meet you half way

Interesting read from this month's Proceedings by Admiral Stavridis on writing and the Navy.

Options for publishing and testing our ideas are also ever-expanding. The Internet and electronic publications afford us ample opportunity to match our ideas against those of others. Blogs and Internet forums are great arenas for testing the waters, sharpening arguments, and crystallizing thoughts. Perhaps these forums even reduce the perceived risk level of publishing, lowering the "whole Navy will read this" anxiety factor.

To a certain extent this is true, and electronic forums serve a great messaging purpose. But military professionals should be cautioned always to keep the conversation above board and to avoid anonymous posting while keeping classification and good judgment in the forefront of our minds. I'm sure we've all learned the lesson of the e-mail we wish we hadn't sent-the one that got forwarded well beyond the lifelines of the ship?and that returned to haunt us. So use all the media available, but do so within the bounds of command sense, policy, regulation, and especially classification.

Sorry Admiral, our experiences WRT publishing and active censorship must be different. I recommend some peer counseling. I'll stay anon, thank you very much.

You should read it all - and there are some solid Officers, CDR Hendrix for one, who are holding their own quite well out of the closet. As for me, I like the extra running room.