Talk:Thomas P. Christie

This comment is in regards to the proposal to delete the subject page for Thomas P. Christie.

Mr. Christie might be notable for many reasons, but the sole reason I took the time to create a subject page for him was his work with Col. John Boyd. Col. Boyd has been given the primary credit for developing several concepts that fundamentally changed U.S. military policies and tactics. However Col. Boyd was only able to develop, and more importantly, communicate his ideas with the help of several like minded individuals. Mr. Thomas Christie was one of those few individuals who aided John Boyd.

Mr. Christie, along with Pierre Sprey, Franklin 'Chuck' Spinney, William Lind, and others fought for four decades to improve the U.S. military, risking their careers because they thought they could help the military.

To me, the remarkable aspect of Mr. Christie is not so much that he had a different view of the best use of U.S. treasure to protect the United States, but that he openly advocated his views from within the U.S. government for those many years. Doesn't everyone want to get along with their coworkers and supervisors? Isn't it the "yes man" who gets promoted? We all learned how the world works in junior high school: sit at the lunch table with the regular conformist kids and you'll get invited to the birthday party at the pool;  hang out with the obnoxious, belligerant, non-conformist (like Col. John Boyd) and you'll spend all of your saturday nights watching TV with your parents.

Creating a subject page for Thomas Christie serves two purposes. First, it shows that the individuals who aided John Boyd were themselves persons of substance and accomplishment, not just tools to be used to achieve a goal, and secondly that people can effect change from within organizations without burning down the house.

"The article subject is non-notable in any real way. Being a government bureaucrat is simply not enough."

I'm sorry that I have not developed this subject page sufficiently to separate Mr. Christie from the crowd. However I feel someone who contributed to a fundamental concept of the modern U.S. military is deserving of mention. Tm3108 (talk) 01:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)