[DesertRhino]

Thats a complete fantasy, your idea that the standing Army was expanded after the war of 1812.

We started with one regiment in the 1790s. That was soon expanded to a total of 13. (interesting number,,,isn’t it?)
In the war of 1812 we expanded to 50 regiments.
In 1815 it was reduced to a 8, lower than the prewar total. In 1821 it was reduced even further to 7.

And the importance of a Navy was well understood, and it was commissioned and steadily grew. It was only limited by finances early on. By the civil war the navy was very powerful. That’s simply unsupportable that we had no effective navy before T. Roosevelt.

And in any case, despite the thread hijack, the argument was that America was not built upon the idea of worldwide intervention on a continuous basis like the Romans, or Brits had to. They were in almost constant military action and were intervening in nations far from home, and dictating their governments.

As fun as that is, it destroys freedom at home, bankrupts the treasury, and creates enmity worldwide. It is doing so with us, and the neocons love every minute of it. Some conservatives do too because they confuse supporting our military, with needing to champion its near constant use worldwide.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"In 1815 it was reduced to a 8, lower than the prewar total. In 1821 it was reduced even further to 7."

What you say may be true. I don't know the exact numbers, but the idea of a nation being defended by the militia alone (which was the original beliefs of our founding fathers) was soon dismissed with the War of 1812. I'm sure that after the war due to budgetary constraints we did reduce, but eventually we expanded as Manifest Destiny started to take hold.

"That’s simply unsupportable that we had no effective navy before T. Roosevelt."

Yes, we had a larger navy during the Civil War, but that's because we were at war. That Navy was still not capable of power projection abroad. It was strong enough to bottle up the South. We did not start to have a Navy that was capable of power projection until starting in the late 19th century when modern battleships started to be built and Alfred Thayer Mahan's ground breaking book "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783" was published. And yes, a strong Navy is about power projection abroad.

My point is that I agree with you we should not be getting into constant wars abroad. History has proven that is the fastest way to bankrupt great countries. However, George W Bush and 9/11 is not the first time that we have meddled in things and acted as imperialist. The Mexican American War and the Spainish American War had little to do with defending our National interest. Unless you consider grabbing territory in our national interest. There are many conflicts that we have gotten into (WWI) that I think we had no business in. It was mentioned earlier in the thread about Beirut and Reagan. He was wrong to send us in there. Where was our national interest there? I actually think it was more in our national interest to allow the IDF to wipe out Arafat and the PLO not intervene for them.