One of the reasons I am so excited about digital activism is that it gives a very public voice to people with few financial resources (start a free blog and you instantly have a potential audience of millions). In short, digital activism empowers ordinary citizens to have a significant impact on world affairs

But with this privilege comes responsibility. If the Internet allows ordinary citizens to influence world affairs we have to think very carefully about how we use that influence. Case in point: MoveOn's campaign to get American troops out of Iraq. Above is a video they recently posted in order to recruit members to join that effort.

I thought the video was well-done, but I wanted to have an expert opinion, so I asked my classmate Kent Park, a West Point grad and Captain in the US Army who served as Company Commander of a Stryker Company deployed to Mosul and Baghdad. His response to the video is very insightful and I thought I'd share it here. He is responding to the prompt, "what do you think of the video?":

Is it true, yes.
Is it fair, no.
Is it effective, probably.


The substance is very shallow...it's aimed at inciting emotion rather than reason.


Rushing into this war got us into this mess. Rushing out isn't going to fix it. Political leaders didn't listen to military advise going in. Perhaps they should listen to them coming out. I just don't think people realize what is going to happen if we pull out too early. Going into this war, our political leaders (Republicans) made all sorts of crazy predictions of how well this was going to work. Political leaders (Democrats) are now making all sorts of crazy predictions about how well the withdraw will work. When will they learn?