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Of course! Military spending for self-defense is a perfectly legitimate function of goverment. Military spending to become a world nanny state, however, is not what the founders envisioned.

Clearly in our interest? I don't think that the president has a crystal ball to determine any more than he ha as crystal ball to determine whether more welfare or housing subsidies are in our national interest. After all, back in 1953 the president thought it was "clearly" in our national interest to overthrow a democratically elected government in Iraq. Most recently, the president thought it was "clearly" in our national interest to support dictatorships in the Muslim states in the former Soviet Union.

I love how easily you feel the need to speak for the founders. Especially since the founders, in their time, had no idea things like jets and international air travel and all that stuff were even possible.

It doesn't take 6 months to cross an ocean like it did back then. We have interests in the region even if it's just so that if we don't get involved, someone ELSE will.

Go hide in your shell if you want, but you'll only be missing out on something that will be vitally important to the United States, her allies and our very core interests. I've said in other comments it's not there yet, but it will be very obvious when the time has come.

It doesn't take 6 months to cross an ocean like it did back then.

. You mischaracterize the foreign threat of that period. During the eighteenth and century, our enemies didn't have to "cross an ocean" to attack us. They were just next door. At various times, we were surrounded on all sides by imperial powers, the British superpower to the North, the Spanish to Southwest, and the French to the West. In this respect, we were less "isolated" from military attack that we are now. The Canadians and Mexicans. are not a military threat (as the British, French, and Spanish Empires once was).

The founders and their successors in the early Republic had to contend with direct foreign threats on a daily basis. BTW, I don't claim to "speak for" the founders. They were great men but hardly demigods.