More sightings/calls of and for the SysAdmin force

■"In Year of Disasters, Experts Bring Order To Chaos of Relief: Logistics Pros Lend Know-How ToVolunteer Operations," by Glenn R. Simpson, Wall Street Journal, 22 November 2005, p. A1.

■"An Army for the Day After," editorial, New York Times, 28 November 2005, pulled from web.

"Amateurs discuss strategy, experts discuss logistics," so goes the old saw.

Actually, it's journalists and op-ed columnists who discuss strategy in our system, but let's put that systemic weakness aside for this post.

Good SysAdmin work is all about business continuity. I know, I know. That seems way premature, but it's actually true. Stability and security is all about re-/establishing business continuity post-conflict, post-disaster, post-whatever.

Once you have business continuity, then society as a whole discounts the residual dangers, and even if the rebels re-emerge, they never capture the high ground of future expectations. People discount them, businesses discount them, investors discount them.

If done right, the rebels/insurgents/whatevers simply become marginalized. They present no future except an end to the "chaos," so minimalize their "chaos" and their offer to end it becomes meaningless.

You want stuff moved in austere conditions known as war, call the military.

But if you want stuff moved with the continuity associated with peace, then you want logistical pros from the private sector. Keeping the military in that business is wrong: it's war solutions to peace problems. It's making the Leviathan do the SysAdmin's work.

This is why the SysAdmin will be mostly civilian in bodies, because that is where most of the talent is naturally found for making the peace work. The military, to the extent they're needed, are logically front-loaded in this process, this sequencing.

That's the essential second-half game we've yet to master, even as most of the solutions we need in the military are easily found in the private sector, right now. Frankly, that's why I'm working for Enterra Solutions right now and not the Defense Department any more. Building the SysAdmin function will be more civilian than military, and more private sector than public, in its overall orientation.

And yet, as the Times piece points out, you either reshape the military toward stability operations or get prepared to suffer more quagmires:

Stability operations are not a panacea. But if used wisely, they can spell the difference between a successful completed mission and an endless quagmire.

Yes, yes, even the NYT wants its SysAdmin force now.

Hmmm. Maybe the Grey Lady might even get around to reviewing my books some day!