Fred Kaplan on what's up with our military budget. Years ago, I had a long, nasty debate with a right-wing friend who insisted we had to spend as much money as possible on every possible weapons system…and it didn't seem to matter a lot if the systems worked or if they worked as well as other systems we might buy. You were "soft on defense" (his term) and perhaps praying for America to be conquered (his insinuation) if you, say, wanted to stop funding System A and instead put all that money into System B.
I've never understood that. I seem to remember a time when John McCain said something about how he could slice many billions from the defense budget by trimming fat and eliminating ineffective programs. He hadn't even said what he'd cut but he was attacked by his fellow party members as if he'd said, "Let's replace all our guns with big sticks!" It struck me as an odd line of attack from people who think every other aspect of the government is filled with pork, inefficiency and waste.
Anyway, go read Fred.