Recommend you read this and learn:
Budgeting for America’s National SecurityPublished on July 19, 2011 by Jim Talent
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Testimony/2011/07/Budgeting-for-Americas-National-Security
“The issues raised in this Report are sufficiently serious that we believe an explicit warning is appropriate. The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition and force structure” (page v).
“There is a choice our planners do not have. As the last 20 years have shown, America does not have the choice of abandoning a leadership role in support of its national interests. Those interests are vital to the security of the United States. Failure to anticipate and manage the conflicts that threaten those interests—to thoughtfully exploit the options we have set forth in support of a purposeful global strategy - will not make those conflicts go away or make America’s interests any less important. It will simply lead to an increasingly unstable and unfriendly global climate and, eventually, to conflicts America cannot ignore, which we must prosecute with limited choices under unfavorable circumstances - and with stakes that are higher than anyone would like” (pages 28-29).
Much more at the link
Rumsfeld: Cutting Defense ‘A Grievous Mistake’
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/01/rumsfeld-cutting-defense-a-grievous-mistake/
The problem is that we think we need to be involved in all the world’s conflicts. It has nothing to do with lack of funding.
If there is one thing I dislike the Heritage Foundation on, it’s defense policy. On that account, they are pretty much apologists for the Bush Administration.
One notable problem that shows up in that testimony is where Talent said, “All the regional, religious, and ethnic rivalries that had been suppressed beneath the Soviet-American competition came to the surface, and the United States used its military to manage the resulting conflicts.” Umm, why? It’s not our business to be involved in all the petty tribal conflicts we are involved in, like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The job of the United States military is to protect the United States, not bring about global peace, a job that will only be accomplished by Jesus Christ. We should do that as efficiently as possible, using tested military strategies, like raids.