Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
One of my Marine reservists (cannon cocker) got 72 hour notice that he was to report earlier this semester. I know short call up times are not the norm and IRR threats aren't likely the norm either. It is hard not to notice though that of the dozen+ veterans I had in my classes we are now down to exactly 2. One is thinking he's going to jump for a warrant officer position, and the other is Air Force and not subject to recall.
We had a kid (Marine college officer program) have more or less the same thing happen to him. He had a week to drop classes and get stuff in order before reporting to training. So far it hasn't touched any of our AF people (regular duty or reserve).

Back to the slide.... I do like the jenga model, although as mentioned earlier it might benefit from the idea of players putting sticks in the lower areas at the same time someone's taking them out above. JCustis' musical chairs idea is also fitting. The stopwatch, I think, is based more on what politicians believe is American domestic patience and/or political expediency (in our case...it can be different in other countries) and often ignores outside circumstances or realities. It's an internal clock, and that may well be where some of our problems start. As soon as things get difficult the focus swings to internal factors and away from whatever the desired end-state might have been when the whole thing started.

Of course, any time there's a change in leadership (and it's worth considering that the US has a controlled revolution of sorts every two years - since you have to take congressional elections into account as well) the stopwatch resets...but with a variable amount of time. It could be less than before, more than before, or stay the same.

Just some early morning thoughts...feel free to hack away at 'em.