Can Military Governments be a good thing (for a while)?

[TheCurmudgeon]

Being a military man, I would like to think that the military that understands its role as a servant of the country (however you define THAT term), can step in when the alternative is a decent into civil war. There has to be other options.

I wonder if things had been different in Syria had the military not sided with Assad. I realize that is fantasy, but it begs the question of when the military has a duty to protect the population, even from its own government.

I take an oath to the Constitution, and then to the President and the Officers appointed over me. I prefer to think that, in other parts of the world, military men think the same way. I realize this has shades of "Starship Troopers", but reality can be stranger than fiction.