Free Republic

After twenty years of brutalizing the Middle East to make it profitable for Raytheon, we have finally stopped burning our borrowed trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the world reaped a peace dividend. No longer were we eyeball to eyeball, armed to the gills, staring down the Russians. We and the Russians had a buffer of independent, NATO leaning nations between us. Military expenditures in Europe declined. The US continued to cover the shortfalls in spending of the European free loaders, Cold War or not, during this period. Then NATO began its massive expansion...