Via Noumenalself, I noticed this WSJ article which details our national defense budget:

There are many different ways in which this is a fairly interesting figure...

1) Consider that our defense budget is larger than the next 14 nations combined:


(source is Wikipedia so I don't know how exact that figure is, but I have heard it on the Military Channel as well)

2) Consider that this is just one more way in which we are fighting this war with our hands tied behind our backs.

3) Consider how much we spend on welfare state entitlements! Our government considers a bum's "right" to a dole check to be worth more expenditure than your right to not get blown to smithereens by Islamists (or Chinese or North Koreans, etc).

-Inspector

Better used going into tax cuts...

Yeah, but that would create jobs and reduce dependence on the government.

Can't have that.

I'm not 100% sure of the 14 nation figure, but it sounds about right. There are a few points that the disarmament crowd tends to overlook when they cite this to complain about our spending levels, however.

1) No other country is engaged in defense globally. We are the prime target of every tyranny and militant cadre that developes ambitions beyond murdering its own people or their immediate neighbors. Most of the countries on the list are only concerned with their own borders or the affairs of a single region, so they do not require the same standing forces and transportation assets.

2) Many of the other countries on that list have artificially low figures because we have been defending them since 1945!

If we are going to make any reduction, it should be to pull American forces out of Europe. A Soviet invasion of Europe was a legitimate security threat to the US, but no such situation exists today.

The Euopeans can defend themselves from Islamist terrorism, police the Balkans, and even repel an invasion should they be faced with a resurgent Russia. The combined GDP of the EU countries is about equivalent to ours and their population is higher. They could deploy a competitive modern military at any time, they simply don't want to. Continuing to defend Europe just subsidizes their welfare state.

3) An expensive military saves lives. In historic terms, the big news in Iraq (or even Vietnam) was not that American soldiers are dying, but how few of them are. Our current military capabilities allow us to accomplish battlefield objectives with minimal loss of life where less sophisticated militaries would need a bloodbath. A vote to cut military spending is likely a vote to get American soldiers needlessly killed.

This is just about the only issue where I actually want the government to spend more money. The only issue is where the money should be coming from, which the WSJ piece hit dead on:

Good point! We're helping them to sustain the unsustainable at our own expense. Not good.