Friday, April 24, 2009

What's in a name?

What's in a name?  That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet;
What do you get when you promise to flood Afghanistan with Americans, but don't have the bodies to follow through on your promise?
Military reservists may be asked to volunteer to fill many of the hundreds of additional U.S. civilian positions in Afghanistan called for in the Obama administration's strategy for that nation and neighboring Pakistan, officials said yesterday.
So the President wants "several hundred" civilian bodies to beef up our presence in Afghanistan by the end of the fiscal year.  That's in about five months.  Having been on the receiving end of the federal hiring process before (and about to jump back into that pool again) let me summarize my opinion: good luck with that.

So...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week discussed the possibility of identifying reservists in civilian fields and inviting them to volunteer for the jobs provided certain conditions could be met.

The State Department, officials said, wants the reservists to dress in civilian clothes and to report up a civilian chain of command reaching to an overall civilian coordinator who would supervise all nonmilitary U.S. programs in Afghanistan.

An IA without the Army lifestyle?  Let me be the first to say "where do I sign up?"  Here's the upside: the radical idea here is to take reservists whose civilian skills would be useful and actually let them use their skills.  So an agronomist would actually work on agronomist stuff.  Combine this with a relatively crummy job outlook back in the states, and reports that there are more officers asking to go IA right now than there are billets to fill, and it looks like a win-win to me.  Here's the downside: I'm going to assume that dressing in civilian clothes means no body armor and no weapon.  Not sure I like that part of the deal.

Still, I wonder if Madame Secretary has any use for a lawyer with a degree in diplomacy?

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Radio Silence

There's got to be a better way to do this. I'll probably add links to the side bar for these folks, but for now (lest I lose the scrap of paper with these links while I'm, er... between jobs) I thought I'd link-dump to blogs of Navy IA's who have either gone silent or are home and have turned their blogging to normalcy. Send along others if you know of them.

A Bear In The Desert. EWO in Iraq, 2008.
Navy of One. EWO in Iraq, 2007.
Dirt Sailor. I served with this guy in the 2000-2003 time frame. Smart dude, perceptive as heck.
Dried Squid. Circa 2006-2007.
Mountain Sailor. A doctor in Afghanistan, 2007-2008.
Pearl In The Desert. NFO, Iraq, 2007-2008.
The Allens' Grand Adventure. (CJTF-HOA, 2008)

Update: Moved David in Herat here from the active blog list.
Update: Moved Sailor in the Cradle here from the active blog list.
Update: Moved IADELOYMENT here from the active blog list.
Update: Moved Tracy's Adventures in Afghanistan here from the active blog list.
Update: Moved Afghanistan IA here from the active blog list.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Why? (The inaugural post)

A few days ago, while scrounging the Internet looking for whatever information I could find on the IA experience, I came across a post on Eye of the Storm mentioning that the "collective Navy Individual Augmentee experience" is one of three books not yet written that Charles would love to read. Me too. I'm on the hook to head into an IA this year, and in trying to learn whatever I can about what the next year holds I have come to the same conclusion as Charles: the IA is a unique part of Navy history that needs to be recorded for posterity. So this might end up being another blog about my IA, when it arrives. Or it might work out to be a step toward recording others' IA experiences for posterity. We'll see. For now, I've linked to any Navy IA blogs that I can find on the right side of the page in the hopes that people can use this page as one stop shopping to see what's going on in the world of Navy IAs today. If you know of other blogs by or about IAs, let me know in the comments and I'll try to link them also. (I have not linked to ones that are now silent or whose authors are back home. I'll put those up some time also, but for now thought I'd focus on the active Navy IA'ers.)