OPSEC matters…

And Matt Drudge crossed “the line.”

Congratulations to Prince Harry for doing what all too few in our generation accomplish: selfless service. And I can kind of understand how people want to put those who engage in selfless service on a pedestal. Fine, but wait until the deployment is bloody well over.

Loose lips sink ships. As Lutherans we ask: what does this mean? It means that when my soldier is deployed, he doesn’t tell me what he’s doing and where he’s doing it. Because if a military wife tells her three best friends in the world about a mission, and these best friends tell their three other best friends who in turn tell their three other best friends who tell… you get the point. Eventually, due to the way we communicate in this generation, the mission is compromised and men and women die unnecessarily.

I had to explain to a friend of Josh and mine how it was inappropriate to say, “I wish the Bush girls were in Iraq.” Yes, our friend said the statement out of grief and missing Josh, but that doesn’t keep in mind security. The media would disclose the whereabouts of the Bush girls and they would be targets, as would those around them.

I’m glad Prince Harry is a servant. There are far too few in the world. But, our “right to know” about what high profile people are doing is MUCH less important then the right of Prince Harry and his fellow soldiers to engage in a mission in as safe a manner as possible. If ANYTHING were to have happened to the Prince or any of his comrades due to Matt Drudge’s reporting, he would be complicit in murder. We are talking about people’s lives, not Prince Harry and when he wore a Nazi outfit to a Halloween party or getting sloshed or whatever. And that is the difference.