Brooks: we need the SysAdmin

POST: Support for the Troops, By David Brooks AND Bob Herbert, The Conversation, October 22, 2009

If I'm not mistaken, I've blogged Brooks saying similar things in the past (or maybe it was just Ferguson and Boot).

Anyway, here's the relevant bit:

David Brooks: I'm not sure it's necessary to have national mobilizations a la World War II, but I can think of a few things that might spread the sacrifice around. First, we need a civilian nation-building academy. The military dominates nation-building efforts in part because the State Department contributions are pathetic. In Afghanistan the so-called civilian surge has been practically non-existent. We need to train people to do this kind of work -- to provide legal aid, police aid, agricultural aid and so on. We don't have to call it a colonial office, but we do need civilians who are willing to go to places like Afghanistan and do civil society building work.

(Thanks: Jeffrey Itell)

Comments

[CitSAR]

The Civil Air Patrol is an example of a start up model that could be tweeked into a new SysAdmin Corps. I.E. gocivilairpatrol.com and ctwg.cap.gov. In the small state of CT there are over 700 members in 14 Squadrons. In the US over 35,000.

CAP is unpaid, for SysAdmin Corp work you will have to pay them...

CAP is a 5013c Corp in its own right and it is the official Aux of the USAF when called upon. Its also a State partner when called upon and has MOUs with the DEA, DoHS, and on. It is manned by a mix of retired and active military as well as pure civilain volunteers age 12 to 70, 80.....members are from every possible core career path in business as well as the military ones.

[Greg]

I agree. Nation building should be in State rather than the military. However, how do we secure the safety of these people? Are they anymore likely to be welcomed than the military in places where they are really needed, i.e. failed states? It would seem that one would still need a very strong military presence to secure the peace.

[phil]

Land grant colleges (and other colleges) offer a good example. They provided their states with people trained in engineering, agriculture, medicine, law, teachers etc. who were then able to improve and modernize their states. Closing the frontier via institution building. A kind of 19th century sysadmin.

[joe Michels]

Tom,

On topics like this you are the expert. it is good that your ideas are being echoed, even if without credit to you.

I believe that Americans would get on board with this idea, after two things. 1) that our enemy is properly defined, and 2) we have a national debate on the issue, like we are having with health care.

Bush never defined it correctly, and Obama has redefined Bush's war on terror to nothing more than police operations followed by prosecution. A few successful mall attacks, or worse, on US soil and some leader will obtain the courage to define our current war for what it is and mobilize the citizens to eliminate our foes across the globe.

[David Sutton]

Tom - I've drunk the cool aid enough to applaud the growth in the idea but to still shy away from the idea that State can handle the assignment.

It's DOE for me or broke.

Sate's for teh talking DOE for the doing, marine for the overwatch and SOCOM for the trigger pulling.

However the idea of Sys Admin is growing outside the US. The Australian government has announced a disaster relief team with a Asian focus not limited to just Australian disasters.

Its envisioned as the right mix of mil-civ agencies to get there fast and get bodies out of the rubble.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/25/2723484.htm

[CitSAR]

With regards to the Australian article: 500 isnt nearly enough for a large disaster on the volunteer basis. The fallout will be too big. As mentioned above. CAP has 35,000 members in the US, 700 here in CT alone. In an emergency, we follow the ICS system to organize Civ and Mil units into their respective specialties. It works. The only problems are based around getting everyone the ICS training they need and the costs in money and time associated with a long term deployment of volunteers. A paid professional force would solve for both.I do not think getting people to sign up would be the problem - internal politics will be the main problem.

[TEJ]

Mr. Sutton

I've worked with the ADF on two separate occassions (Unified Assistance after the Boxer Day tsunami and Pacific Partnership '08 in Timor Leste et al.) and learned a lot from them. In Unified Assistance they deployed medical/prev med officers with a company of engineers to both diagnose and cure water/waste/disease vector/public health issues, which is exactly what USN did in the follow-on Pacific Partnership missions. Both deployments were in Australia's backyard and we benefited greatly from the cultural competency and historical knowledge ADF brought along. China is sailing the 866 hospital ship now, but ADF still casts a longer soft power shadow in the region and it's good to see them not sit pat. Would love to see ADF provide soft power capacity-building to Indonesia.

[Mark]

Tom is going to give you guys jobs when someone wises up and gives him the task of building the SysAdmin force.So nice to see and read intelligent comments on this blog.