Every time a civil emergency looms, the generals have a chance to declare that it would be undemocratic and disloyalto the Indonesian people to carry out an order to enforce it as much as they would like to help the president.
After all, who would credit the idea that this president -- or any other one with even a lick of sense -- would be willing to employ so manifestly disloyal and dishonest an individual?
Unfortunately, the sort of destructive and disloyal behavior Deputy Secretary Armitage epitomized continues tobe practiced in high reaches of the State Department.
To make matters worse, technology has concentrated this information in data files that can be stolen in a click: emailed to a personal account by a disloyal employee or copied to a disc in seconds.
And Mr Fonseka's biggest mistake as a candidate may have been to appear disloyalto his own soldiers by accusing the defence secretary (who happens tobe the president's brother) of having ordered extra-judicial killings (before withdrawing the accusation).