Since President Felipe Calderón dispatched the army to take on drug violence in Mexico, allegations of abuses committed by soldiers against civilians have increased significantly.
He was characteristically laconic on December 4th when he declared a state of emergency in the northern department of Cajamarca, dispatching the army to quash weeks of protests against Minas Conga, a giant mining project.
President Felipe Calderón -- no relation to the officer killed Thursday in Mexico City -- has dispatched the army to fight cartels and is hoping the U.S. Congress will approve a $400 million aid package to help Mexico confront drug traffickers.
When society began to resist this oppression, and organized a mass protest rally at the main football stadium in Conakry on Sept. 28, 2009, the Camara regime dispatched the army to surround the rally and opened fire with live ammunition.
On an official visit to Macedonia's southern border in July, President Gjorge Ivanov announced that he would respond to the growing migrant crisis by dispatching the army to the area "to assist police in facing these challenges and the large numbers of emigrants".
As the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq demonstrated (before the occupation and counterinsurgency war started), a relatively small, high technology American ground force, supporting air power, could dispatch the conventional army of a land power in short order.
"The lesson from Clinton is that the general doesn't always have to be here but you have to dispatch the rest of the army," said Mr. Whalen, who is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
In 2013 President Goodluck Jonathan, who is up for re-election, declared war on Boko Haram and dispatched the Nigerian army to battle them.
It was a group of about 13 Spanish soldiers led by García López de Cárdenas, dispatched from the army of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado on its quest to find the fabulous Seven Cities of Gold.
According to the dispatches, the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, threatened to oust the president, Asif Zardari, last year, while Zardari was so fearful of his fate that he made plans for his possible assassination.
