War Blogs: Alternative Media in Narrating the War?

The nature of war has a major impact on how it will be represented and remembered in the media and literature. Unlike in previous wars, the developments and the availability of technologies and media have enabled twenty-first century soldiers to become the immediate protagonists of their own war narratives. Technology has allowed for a more instantaneous, first-hand experience of the war to reach the public gaze and, even more importantly, to challenge, disprove, or even subvert official military, political, and media re-ports. One such example is Colby Buzzell’s blog CBFTW(Colby Buzzell Fuck the War), which he launched during his deployment to Iraq in 2004, and turned into a memoir, My War: Killing Time in Iraq, in 2005. Writing the blog in the midst of the war, in which he disputes many official reports, put him under the surveillance of his commanders and of the Pentagon itself. This paper will focus on how the cynicism, sarcasm, and honesty of Buzzell’s memoir and blog entries indeed contradicted the mainstream media and military reports of the Iraq War. With that, the blog seemed to challenge Baudrillard’s insights on the media, simulation, and spectacle. However, the analysis will also point to the fact that the power of Buzzell’s blog as an alternative media was brief since the military managed to undertake actions that regulate (censor) twenty-first century war narratives.