[Zhang Fei]

I respect your sentiments, but the idea that these wars are hyper-expensive does not stand up to scrutiny. As a % of the national economy, defense spending hasn't skyrocketed. In fact, it's actually down since the Reagan years. It's no exaggeration to say that these are small wars. I'm trying to think of a category of government spending that has gone down as a % of the economy since the Reagan years, and apart from defense spending, I can't come up with any. Anyway, here are a couple of charts illustrating the historical trends:

State, local and federal spending has skyrocketed, but it's not mainly because of defense expenditures.

[Rashputin]

Bogus comparison.

Compare Federal spending only to defense spending to have a legitimate comparison.

[LRoggy]

Another clueless post. The Afghan and Iraq wars were funded by extra appropriations outside the normal Defense budget process and are NOT included in those graphs.

[DrPretorius]

“...the idea that these wars are hyper-expensive does not stand up to scrutiny.”

Gulf War US deaths 382
Iraq War US deaths 6988
Afghanistan War US deaths 2378

So, we’ve squandered trillions of dollars and wasted the lives of 10,000 servicemen and taken ten times that many casualties and that doesn’t qualify as “hyper-expensive”? Ask the families of those who died or were wounded for this ongoing folly if they would agree with you.