Back home, tea partiers clamoring for the debt-ridden government to slash spending say nothing should be off limits. Tea party-backed lawmakers echo that argument, and they're not exempting the military's multibillion-dollar budget in a time of war.
While I think that defense spending should be immune to budget cuts (not reshaping, however, to redirect spending), the need to cut our spending is so urgent that I don't think that defense spending outside of the operational costs of fighting our military campaigns can politically escape cuts. And if failure to cut overall spending rests on not including defense spending, I don't see how we can avoid defense cuts.
Our priorities should be training and readiness above all else, including pursuing technology and numbers. It is easiest for our politicians to scrimp on training and maintenance to keep what we have ready to fight, while buying new equipment that the more poorly trained troops won't be able to use as effectively, but which looks good as long as it isn't used.
We shall see how President Obama (who is already willing to take risks in the medium term and let future leaders reverse our slide) and Congress approach defense cuts. Alas, you go to war with the Congress and President you have and not the Congres and President you wish you had. That applies to defense appropriations, too.
