One wonders if it has struck anyone in Washington that America's adversaries - enemies is an inappropriate word in the post-Soviet world - want America to remain mired in the poisonous swamp of Iraq for the foreseeable future. The real prison in Iraq is not the one holding prisoners in Abu Ghraib, but the black hole that has transformed American foreign policy into a tunnel with only two departure points: Iraq and its neighbor Iran.

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The question needs to be reversed: only a strong state can build a strong military, and not the other way around. Wherever the military has taken over the state, or made itself synonymous with the state’s preservation, both the military and the state have weakened. Protected by the thin veneer of false patriotism, a military regime with civilian authority destroys the very principles that make an armed force viable – accountability being at the top of the list.

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