War on the web

The pity of war has been well documented ever since we as rivalrous, destructive human beings developed pen and paper. But this latest British conflict against Iraq is the first in which the new possibilities of internet communication have really taken off. Blogs, emails, the YouTube and MySpace websites have given the soldiers out in Basra and Fallujah an unprecedented opportunity to tell not just us back home but the whole world exactly what it’s like to be out there, almost as it happens. Just switch on your computer, key into Google and type ‘Iraq soldier blogs’ and you’ll come up with any number — bootsonground.blogspot.com, justanothersoldier.com — or at least you could until a number of them were shut down by the military authorities. Back in the Afghan wars of the 1840s, it was only when Dr William Brydon rode into Jalalabad, bloodied, exhausted and almost falling off his horse, that the camp commanders discovered that their army, more than 16,000 soldiers, had been savagely slaughtered by the Afghan rebels a week earlier as they struggled through the Khyber Pass on the retreat from Kabul.