The best example of the civil-military thing that I have seen is in Myanmar/Burma (was renamed Myanmar by the army although the natives tend to still call it Burma after the largest tribe in that country. In that country their 500,000 man army is completely removed from the rest of the country and their bases are isolated communities within the country. They have their own everything, including golf courses. Soldiers, I was told, do not marry outside of the army (this was explained to me by a woman there when I asked why she wasn't married. She replied that between the army and the monks there weren't all that many men left. She also said that the military establishments were so isolated from the rest of the people because they feared the rest of the people would hurt them (I never figured out if she was kidding or not)). However, the fact remains. The army, for instance, by constitutional decree (which the army wrote), gets to assign half of their legislature with whoever they want.
The current Muslim/Buddhist thing over there is a problem because that country is split into 3 distinct communities; the normal people, the military, and the Buddhist religion. In other words nobody really knows who is in charge of what. Its a very strange place............. When we were there (for a month) the Muslims were being attacked by a Nazi-like Buddhist monk and his followers (really!), now it seems that the army has joined up with the monks to slaughter the Muslims. The average citizenry seems to just be keeping their heads down and hope it all works out in the end.
