Money Down A Rathole Dept.: The US military is trying to fight wars of ideas without occupying the lands from which the opposing ideas spring. Vietnam was a first. The claim that the enemy was hiding among the populace was nonsense. The enemy WAS the populace, it was the people we were fighting. Same with Iraq. US troops aren't safe there unless they are in force. The population resents us. The insurgents seem to be safe enough among them. In Afghanistan, B-52s against nomadic folk living in those hillsides is like using a .22 against a chameleon at 200 yards in the desert - you'll hit something, raise some dust, but likely as not it won't be the chameleon.

We need a military, granted, but not 10 times the military force of all other nations combined. (I believe that was Rumsfeld.) One, it's not doing us any good, and two, it's expensive.

The US has other needs besides a military which would win WWII in a heartbeat. Border security is a big one, maybe the only one. We need CBs to build hospitals, libraries, schools and clinics in foreign countries, part of a real hearts and minds program. We don't need to start a school and film it from every angle for propaganda purposes and then leave. There's no sense in continuing. Suffice it to say that we will not "win" by kicking down doors, raping women, torturing men and women, and imprisoning them in Eastern European and Middle Eastern countries where they can be REALLY tortured. It's not working and it won't work.

"U.S. Republicans will try to spare defense programs by reconfiguring the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts that are to be triggered starting in 2013 by the collapse of a congressional deficit-cutting committee, a leading Republican senator said Sunday.

"I think there's a broad consensus that too much of the cuts are weighted on our defense's capabilities and would really, really cut in deeply into our ability to defend this nation," said Senator Pat Toomey, a member of the "super committee" that failed last week to reach a deal to reduce the huge U.S. debt."

http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/27/9051774-sunday-shows-republicans-to-reconfigure-us-budget-cuts