[CRedskinsRule]

I understand what you are saying Sammy, but I think that is evidence of a military establishment that has in fact become too entrenched and bureacratic. As for stopping and starting on a dime, I am not naive enough to say $0 funding level, but, I am saying you keep a highly scaled back operation in place for 3 years, while the government is reduced overall. As for boots on the ground forces, if you gave a transitional 1-3 years converting army personnel from military purposes to civilian you could revert to a reserve force with a Professional Officer corps that would be trained in rapid response to aggression. We would also put our "partners" on watch in Europe and SEATO that they have the primary "boots on the ground" responsibility for defending their soil. Is that more risky, more likely that a ground war starts somewhere, probably, but we are spending a TON both in financial capital and human capital to act as a tripwire against world wars.

AND at the same time this human capital is wasted if not being used in some military diversion, thus politicians from Clinton-Somalia, Bush-Iraq, Obama-Afghanistan, etc etc have to find outlets for this capital does not involve having military assets sit unused on US soil.