War OR Peace War and Its Consequences

The Battle for Bagdad seems to be over; so now the hundred year war for peace in Iraq begins

The military is the only generously funded institution in American public life. Over recent decades just about every other form of discretionary public spending has been allowed to lag—for education and health care, for environmental and social programs, for parks, schools, libraries, museums, and symphony halls. Only the military seems able to squeeze from Congress funds for the newest, the most sophisticated, the most expensive, and the best of everything, in generous quantity and pretty much on demand.
The US government had grown increasingly dependent on its military to carry out its foreign affairs:

The shift was incremental, little noticed, de facto.... The military simply filled a vacuum left by an indecisive White House, an atrophied State Department, and a distracted Congress.
· Fine Point [NYBooks]