Clearly, the national defense budget might be trimmed somewhat if we were not involved in unnecessary conflicts all over the globe, but pure national defense is an expensive game not easily tamed when the US is not the only participant. The current angst over our ability to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has to do with the fact that our troop levels are the lowest (1.4 million) they have been in many years. However, the costs of troop deployment is expensive and new defense gadgets are not cheap.
I guess my point is that unless peace suddenly breaks out all over the world, defense costs will continue to be a large part of the national discretionary budget, military adventurism or not. I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears
In fact when it became necessary to actually defend the US territory the government established a new department to take on the task, "Homeland Security".
The role of the existing military structure is entirely external and works on offense. Along with the misdirection by incorporating social service funds into the federal budget was the Orwellian step of renaming the War Department the Defense Department.
No one is invading Germany and France and their military is a tiny fraction of the size of the US (even on a per capita basis). They also have no problem getting adequate supplies of needed raw materials from elsewhere - they just pay for them.
Sorry, our runaway militarism has gone way beyond what is needed for defense. Sugar coating or euphemisms just obscure what has been going on. Furthermore this has been an unbroken trend since WWII. The variations in spending from one administration to another have not been meaningful.
If you look at the CBO budget figures you will be hard pressed to figure out which party was in power:
http://cbo.gov/budget/historical.pdf Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
I do not question your comments about the ever increasing size of the military budget following WW II/Korea, but remember this was also the era of the Cold War and the arms race. While the arms race can be seen as wasteful (I see it that way), the US saw itself forced into the race by the Soviet Union (SU). Both nations spent large portions of their budgets on arms and other Cold War actions (the Soviets a much larger percentage). The greater peacetime increases have appeared since the Reagan era and dissolution of the SU and I, like yourself, find them difficult to justify . I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears
...new defense gadgets are not cheap.
You've got your pork right there. How many of these defence gadgets are necessary? How many work as advertised? How many include realistic oversight to check for value and ROI?
US military spending is largely a corporate welfare scam. It's not designed to defend anything or anyone. A lot of new technology simply doesn't work reliably, and when it does work it has minimal tactical or strategic impact.
The US lost in Vietnam, and it's losing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hostile powers could easily take out the most of the US information and power infrastructure in minutes.
A clever hostile power could hide the origin of the attack so there would be no one obvious to retaliate against.
What are those trillions buying in the way of stability or safety?
