The SysAdmin works in decades

POST: It's Time for an Army Advisor Corps

Nagl is a serious visionary. Well worth the read. Further logical evolution toward the SysAdmin force and function.

Iraq is the "end of American empire" to the hysterics and "the worst foreign policy disaster ever" to the academics.

To clued-in professionals, however, it's just the logical pivot we've been waiting on. None expected it would be easy. Indeed, the pain quotient is what drives the change.

In the end, the trigger matters little, the response is everything.

If you want to engage in this sort of stuff, measure your time in decades, not news cycles.

I know, I know. Everything changes so much "faster" today.

Run with that one if it makes you feel better or more in control, but eschew if you want to retain any clarity of vision.

Thanks to Bill Millan for sending this.

Comments

[Lexington Green]

This highlights what I think is Tom's most important insight. The USA keeps doing these tasks (all the "SysAdmin" stuff), so it is long past time to build the institutional home for them, so that they get the funding and attention and personnel and equipment and interagency cooperation and everything that they need to be done as well as possible -- so people don't make sacrifices including their lives for nothing. That simple reality can be agreed to by most people even if they do not buy into all aspects of the Barnettian vision. What we have seen in the last few years since PNM came out is the usual glacial movement in this direction, though I think Tom's book and preaching have helped move the process along and helped to focus the discussion.

[Matt R.]

"I know, I know. Everything changes so much "faster" today.

Run with that one if it makes you feel better or more in control, but eschew if you want to retain any clarity of vision."

I dont think things change any faster today than in the past, we simply learn of these changes at a much faster rate. Also, the more connected places become to the world, the more news and information will flow into and out of this newly connected place. So, news services have to report more information from more places, with they have less time to spend on each topic, so it seems faster. Just my thoughts.