As Sarah Chayes said about the "failed state" of Afghanistan:
> Afghanistan is often described as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly trying, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether”—the enrichment of its own members.
From https://archive.is/CBQFY .
Was it here or in the reviewed book about corruption where it's mentioned, how corruption endangers security, because guess what the civilians who are mad about the blatant corruption will do when they see an insurgent plant a roadside bomb targeting the corrupt government?
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said (and Timothy McVeigh quoted):
> In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution.