David Ignatius has a piece describing the larger problem of what comes after the bombs stop falling and the dancing in the dust ends.

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He notes the trouble the United States has had in following a military victory with the establishment of good governance afterward. It used to be an interesting issue, but recent events have shown us — all too disturbingly — why this is the case. The reason we can’t secure a healthy democracy with military power overseas is the same reason we can’t do it here at home. Democracy is about something else altogether.

He writes: “The problem with this campaign from the beginning was that our military dominance was patched on top of political quicksand. That’s still true. Obama never had a clear political strategy for creating a reformed [nation]; neither does Trump. Our military is supremely effective in its sphere, but the enduring problems of governance, it cannot solve.”

I substituted the world “nation” where Ignatius had written Syria and Iraq. But read the sentence again for its stunning description of the deterioration of the American government and our nation’s political health.

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Whether or not American democracy survives its current terrifying slide into unprecedented dysfunction, the one thing we can be sure of is that a strong military won’t put our own Humpty Dumpty back together. King’s horses and king’s men have never been up to this. Democracy, governance and civil society are a web built of shared interests, values and norms. These are not the things that flow out of the barrel of a gun.

Our foreign engagements have all to often been a case of “the operation was a success, but the patient died.” Well, now the surgeons find themselves in intensive care.