Back On The March

It's midnight at the top ten karaoke bar in Banda Aceh, and the portly drunkard everyone respectfully calls "Commander" is on the mike. "Indonesia," he wails between gulps of Guinness. "You are the red of my blood, the white of my bone." His bleary rendition wins huge applause from the bar's other customers, all Indonesian soldiers deployed in the capital of war-torn Aceh province. "I love that song," slurs the Commander, who is actually an army major. "It makes me feel so patriotic."

Outside the smoke-filled Top Ten, where the Indonesian armed forces, or TNI, are fighting a...