Thursday night at the Jewish Republicans, we heard from Ted Kohler, the latest in three generations of Jews to serve in the US military. His grandfather was in the US Army, and his father served in the Vietnam-era US Navy. Ted himself was wounded when his tank ran over and set off a sarin-gas IED. Since his injuries haven't responded as well as the doctors would have liked, he was given an honorable medical discharge.
Ted gave a brief, military-style briefing, listing the positives and negatives of such battlefield components as the IP, the IA, the US Military, its equipment, and support. While he mentioned a number of items that any milblogger-reader would know about, such as the military's high morale and re-enlistment rate, and the growing importance of the UAV, he also emphasize a number of items that haven't gotten as much attention. For instance, Ted pointed out that the US has been increasingly effective in countering the IED as a weapon.
But one thing stuck out. He notes that the enemy was quick to exploit our "humanity and our rules of engagement." This draws attention to the basic difference between us, and the enemy we are fighting, and it's a distinction that the morally blinkered among us would like the morally lazy among us to ignore.
I asked him about the popularity of milbloggers. He said that while many of the troops, tired from a day of actually fighting of the war, didn't necessarily go home to read about it, he did, and he singled out both Michael Yon and a new milblog I hadn't heard of, Battlefield Tourist. Take a look at both.