Another advance sighting of the SysAdmin force (THE LIST!)

Sent by fellow blogger Keith Mitchell, the original was published today in The New York Sun. Here's the first couple of paras (read more at Keith's site The Neil Rogers Show):

'Universal Democracy' Is the Goal As Congress Eyes New Legislation

by Eli Lake

When senators return to Washington this September, they will be set to consider new legislation that would commit America to ending tyranny the world over.

Tucked inside the House version of a bill that authorizes spending on foreign aid is the language of what is known as the ADVANCE Democracy Act. The act instructs American ambassadors and embassy staffs to draw up democracy transition plans for unfree regimes, with input from nonviolent opposition movements in the various countries. While Congress has passed laws that require America to work with democratic opposition groups for specific countries - such as the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act - never before has it considered a law that would, as ADVANCE proposes, "commit United States foreign policy to the challenge of achieving universal democracy."

A sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California, predicted that in the Senate the bill, sponsored there by Senator McCain, a Republican of Arizona, and Senator Lieberman, a Democrat of Connecticut, would not be opposed. "I don't think there will be any opposition in the Senate," he told The New York Sun . . .

I'm making a list, I'm checking it twice!

An argument I make in BFA is that we need a system--an A-to-Z Core-wide rule set for processing politically bankrupt regimes. Yes, most of the impetus and original pieces of such a system will come from the U.S., but the key is getting buy-in from the rest of the Core by stressing our own adherence to the emerging rule set (discoverable only through open discussion). As that comes together, we make the list and make it public, and if we do it right, we get most of these bad actors off the stage without having to intervene with the Leviathan, just the SysAdmin force to help in the reconstruction. But having the list and showing a willingness to use it constitutes the key deterennce, or strategic triad of the post-9/11 era.

In the Cold War, it was land, air and sea-based missiles that formed our strategic triad. Now, the new word I'm hearing from Army officers and Marines and Special Ops guys is that the strategic triad for the 21st century, or the force that deters bad things from happening to America directly, is the Army, Marines and SOCOM. This is, to me, a real breakthrough concept that I should probably gin into a slide.