There isn't the industrial base needed for a war footing. Not that the next war would necessarily be industrial - at least, not for long - but politically the population wouldn't support a war without physical coercion, and physically the US doesn't have the energy needed to re-industrialise itself.

Boeing, Northrup, Lockheed, Ford and General Motors  might beg to differ.  The one thing we do still have is the war making ability.  It might take a coup to bring it off properly, though.  Especially if the Dems win in the fall.  If the Repubs win that might itself constitute a de facto coup.  

Victory would probably only be possible through massive genocide and the environmental consequences would likely make it pyrrhic--nuclear winter if things went nuclear; world wide plagues if biological; massive genetic damage if chemical. If the US went for control of Iran it is hard seeing Russia and China taking this quietly.  Plus we would have to deal with Pakistan and Afganistan.  The religious would truly have reason to hope for the rapture.

What would prevent this is simply lack of sufficient military capability.  To bring this off it would be necessary to double the size of the ground forces.  That would take more than a year.  With the Bush administration expiring in seven months about all we could do now is inflict the maximum damage from the air.  They might do that, figuring that that would get McCain elected and commit him to finishing what they had started.  Stay tuned.

That we are having such a discussion is itself an eloquent explanation of why I refer to us as a nation of dumb fucks.  Dumb fucks with a taste for psychopaths.

 

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."