What's Got You So Scared?

Oh, that's not you?  Funny.  It seems like that's all of us.  All of us in the United States.  How else to explain our defense budget?

• The defense budget is almost 60% of discretionary spending.
• We spend more on defense than almost every other country in the world.  Combined!!
• By our own estimates the defense R&D budget (&80.4B) is more than any other country's defense budget
• US Special forces outnumber the total military of some 100 countries.

And we're not on track to reduce it any time soon. The budget submitted by the Most-Liberalest-President-Ever^TM looks to continue military expansion well into the future.

This guy's dead, though.

For that matter, so's this guy.

This guy?  Vanguished!

So who scares us so damn much that we have to outspend every other nation combined on defense?

People are continually saying they are upset about the federal deficit.  But they aren't at all interested in reducing defense spending, nearly a 1/4 of the budget.  Admittedly the budget can't be balanced on the back of Defense. Even if the U.S. were to magically stop all spending money on Defense the budget would not be in balance.  However, if we're really serious about tackling it - and I don't for a moment really believe that - then the sacred cow of Defense has to be put on the butchers block.