Thoughts on military budget cuts

[Torie]

The first step is to decide just what we want our military to be capable of. If it is fighting two rather substantial ground wars at once, you get a very different answer, from an approach that we are not interested in doing that anymore, and our killing machine will be less labor intensive, and use drones and so forth. And then there is the issue of the free loading Europeans and Japanese for whom, to put it rather hyperbolically, we serve as mercenaries, yet even though our hosts can afford to pay us for it, they don't by and large. What do we propose to do about that? I mean can we afford to both subsidize the drug research for the planet, paid for by American "ethical" drug consumers, who just pay more, and also serve as unpaid mercenaries at the same time, while also having a majority of the population taking more from government in direct subsidies than they put in? Just how does that pencil, with going down the road to Greece?

What is the end game?  In a weird way, the Iraq and Afghan wars taught us a valuable lesson, about thinking through the end game (have we inserted ourselves between the blue and gray coats shooting at each other, trying to keep them from killing each other, as both try to kill us), just what we have bought into after we break into the china shop, and the consequences of mission creep by default. And that is just for starters.

I know when I am considering litigation for a client, I try to think these things through very carefully, and then think again, and again. For me, that is my equivalent of deciding to go to war. And if I tell a client, that they should not go to war, I mean it, because if they insist, they will need to find another general. And 95% of the time they listen to me. I am pretty insistent. Both war and litigation are hell. Hell had better be worth it.