Will McEllen

Hello Mr. Evans, Today, War on the Rocks published a "rebuttal" which disclosed the real-life identity of @CynicalPublius . What the article did not mention: you had already posted his name on Bluesky before the WOTR piece published. The WOTR article cited his being “already known” as justification for printing his name. The person who made him “already known” was you. You manufactured the predicate for your own publication’s decision. You then blocked me. And then called me out. Repeatedly. You engaged me, mentioned me, tagged me — even said publicly that you were looking forward to what I had written about War on the Rocks. Blocking someone on a platform and then continuing to publicly engage them is not what a person who wants to be left alone does. It is what a person who wants the attention without the accountability does. You're framing your own just desserts as a “mass witch hunt” initiated by a Hello post I addressed to Brad Duplessis, your contributor, who named Cynical Publius in his debut WOTR piece without disclosing that Anderson’s recommendations for War College reform included eliminating the kind of permanent civilian faculty position Duplessis holds. You are being dunked on because of what you did to Cynical Publius, not because of anything I wrote. Blaming the letter for the blowback is like blaming the smoke alarm for the fire. Cynical Publius wrote that military institutions had drifted from their original professional mission toward ideological conformity and required reform. You responded by publishing his name. The question your letter to me does not answer — and the question a lot of people are now asking — is why an outlet that once existed to challenge that kind of institutional behavior became the one enforcing it. You yourself provide answers to that question. You launched War on the Rocks because you understood something true: the United States had spent two decades losing wars it shouldn't have lost. Twelve years later, when a pseudonymous retired Army officer argues that the War Colleges have drifted from warfighting competence toward ideological conformity, the platform you built publishes his name in the opening sentence. That is not an accident of character. It is how institutions stop being able to learn. Armies that cannot receive criticism cannot conduct honest after-action review. Institutions that cannot correct what they're getting wrong keep losing — and keep being surprised that they're losing, because the people tasked with explaining the failures are the same people defending the institutions that produced them. In short: Mr. Evans, you have been captured by the foreign policy expert class has presided over Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. And you don't even realize it. Wake up. And be on the lookout for a Substack article where I explain your history more thoroughly.