Personally, I think that spending as much on defense as the next twenty countries combined, while we increase our national debt by $1.5 trillion per year, is just as insane.
It's "puzzling" because it's a you can't get there from here any other way -- and they are praising the financial route ignoring the fact that it requires changing our foreign policy to achieve it.
Is "Israel has 3 or 400 nuclear weapons, let them worry about their own defense," a sane suggestion to the threat from Iran? Does any sane person believe that a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would lead to anything but complete chaos and mayhem throughout the Middle East? Any such occurrence would destroy the world's economy cause worse mayhem and destruction than a complete collapse of the European Market.
Which is why Ron Paul was the only one in the debate to preface answering that (stupid) question with saying that Israeli experts don't see that eventuality ever happening and would think it insane to even contemplate -- but they kept pressing the hypothetical answer to the hypothetical question so there was his answer.
What I find "suicidally insane" is that here we are jerking around on the question of "Iran's hypothetical nukes" and "Israel's hypothetical response" while everyone seems bent on ignoring what our current policy has done to completely destabilize Pakistan -- who has real, operational nukes and has no great love for Israel either. Want to start running potentially relevant hypotheticals, there's one for you -- What if Pakistan falls to al Qaeda or an al Qaeda subsidiary and wants to target Israel? There's your damn nightmare scenario.