Pentagon to troops: shave or else.

Over at Salon’s blogging department, Scott Rosenberg is acting surprised that the Pentagon is telling US soliders in Afghanistan to start shaving and dressing in proper uniform. The fact that Rosenberg finds this surprising surprises me. I would have thought that an American journalist would understand the process very well, and it will certainly be familiar to anyone who’s ever served in the US military.
It goes like this. First, military forces do or allow something unusual (like let their special ops troops “go native” with beards and local clothing). This departure from SOP is usually for a sound tactical reason; sometimes it’s a goof, but usually not. Second, the media reports on the unusual behavior. Third, the media reports come to the attention of some chair-dwelling commander, who is Outraged and Horrified and orders The Despicable Behavior to Stop at Once! This has happened so many times before (uniforms in Somalia, women’s attire and the display of Christian symbols in Desert Shield, to name two off the top of my head) that it’s not a surprise; this cycle is part of the reason why so many military personnel dislike the media so intensely (of course, the endemic suspicion and anti-military bias betrayed by so many journalists doesn’t help, either).
There’s a telling comment from the CO of the Kandahar airfield, who is quoted as saying

“An Irish guy with a beard is still an Irish guy,” Col. James L. Huggins, commander of the base, said in an interview. “I don’t know what they are trying to achieve.” . That tends to make me think that a) he’s unsympathetic and b) he doesn’t understand why the policy was relaxed in the first place because c) he’s a garrison CO. I hate it when that happens.