Thoughtful reply with which I find much to agree with. As someone said: “the problem with the federal government is that it spends to much to buy things we don’t want.”
The problem with RP’s defense budget stance is that it’s not just ‘bombs’ he would cut. Read closely, RP is advocating a massive reduction in troop and unit levels. Of course, personnel is where the money is and not in ‘bombs’. So if he’s really going to reduce defense costs, personnel and units are where you cut.
RP maintains we don’t really need these high strenght levels if all we need do is defend our borders. I agree with that but I do not agree with the strategic concept behind that. I would much rather fight our wars on their territory than upon ours. Seems to make sense to me.
Or course, RP would say that if we don’t station troops abroad then we’ll will have no enemies. I find that to be a strange thought that defies human nature or the world as it is. We will have enemies regardless of what we do.
The leaders of Iran want our destruction not because of our support to Israel or our troops in Iraq or elsewhere. They believe they have a religious obligation to establish muslim rule across the world and see our defeat and conversion to Islamic rule as essential to that. (There is a reason they refer to Israel as the ‘lesser Satan’ and to the US as the ‘greater Satan’.) We have a choice here, we can fight them there or here. Call me ‘old fashioned’ but I’d rather fight them in the streets of Tehran than the streets of Omaha.
Attacking people because we’re afraid of them is not “old-fashioned”.