Answering the Booman on the military budget

Answering David Brooks

I left the following comment.

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You wrote,

As long as America maintains its investment in its Navy and its nuclear arsenal, it can maintain most of its global presence and influence.

What's needed in addition to that is the ability to respond to both global calamities like the Sumatran tsunami and the Haitian earthquake, and global hotspots like Kosovo and Libya.

Unless Russia and China develop comparable capabilities, America will still be indispensable in many respects, and thus will have an outsized influence.

I presume this is desirable, although some will differ.

I differ.

We don't actually need any of that.

Not any.

It's all just looking for trouble and the price is we are still stuck with a half-assed social democracy.

Far too many liberals are tired of the fight and far too willing to declare victory and move on to something  more fun, like worrying about women's rights in Somalia and childhood inoculations in Central Africa.

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Notice he didn’t even hint that any of that was necessary for actual national defense.

He didn’t mention that particular mission of the US defense establishment even once.

Nothing could have been further from his mind.

Tsunamis and earthquakes?

"Global hotspots"?

Really?