In January 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th U.S. president, he declared the federal budget to be out of control.

The deficit had reached $74 billion and the federal debt was at $930 billion. Reagan said that a stack of $1,000 bills equivalent to what Uncle Sam owed would be 67 miles high. Chump change and height today.

Now that same stack of $1,000 bills would reach 900 miles high. In $1 bills it would pile up to the moon -- and back. Not once, but twice.

Like a drunken sailor, America continues to borrow about $125 billion a month -- $10 billion of it from China. The United States now owes China $1.3 trillion.

Now at $14.3 trillion, the national debt must be raised again by Aug. 2 if the United States is to avoid default. The Lords of Capitol Hill are playing a dangerous game of chicken as no one wants to assume the responsibility of drastically curbing federal spending and raising taxes at the same time.

Default would rock global markets. By comparison, the Great Depression would look like children losing their weekly allowance. And the rest of the world would begin to look to China as the next global supreme power.

With the U.S. Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his secret lair a short walk from Pakistan's prestigious military academy, we have dramatic evidence that small-scale operations can be more effective for changing the course of history than multi-division invasions that inadvertently hand victory to our enemies.

The intelligence bonanza included a large collection of memory sticks, flash drives, digital/audio/video files, printed material, computer equipment, recording devices and handwritten documents -- the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever captured.

The intel has already been used to strike al-Qaida targets in other parts of the world.

The $1 trillion we blew on Iraq killed Saddam Hussein but it was a Pyrrhic victory that enhanced Iran's power and influence in Iraq.

As the last 40,000 U.S. troops prepare to leave, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki knows he has to live in close proximity with Iran along a 700-mile border from the Persian Gulf to Turkey's southeastern frontier.

The original U.S. strategic plan was to knock off the Iraqi dictatorship whose demise would prove contagious in Syria, and with pro-Western Jordan, give Israel 25 years of security.

The United States can no longer afford a global military strategy and a defense budget that is almost as large as those of the rest of the world combined. Aircraft carrier task forces, including aircraft and escort ships, cost $30 billion or more to build. Annual running costs: $5 billion plus.

There are 11 carrier task forces operational when cost cutters see barely sufficient resources for eight such carrier groups. This would save about $100 billion. The U.S. Navy's current budget: $150 billion.

Yet conservative think tank experts are calling for a larger defense budget in order to keep the U.S. dominant on land, sea and air. Carrier-borne F-18 Super Hornets could have reduced Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad house and compound to dust. But this would have destroyed all the intelligence collected.

The Holy Grail of defense spending isn't as holy as it was before Abbottabad.

Outspending and out-arming the Soviet Union worked at a time when the Soviet empire was on the verge of internal economic collapse. The "American Century" was the politico-military-economic miracle of the 20th century. If it has lost some of its luster in the early 21st century, it is entirely self-inflicted.

The Iraq war was an expensive mistake. The Afghan war was an ill-thought-through, expensive punitive expedition that dragged in 42 other nations and, thus far, cost the hapless U.S. taxpayer almost half a trillion dollars -- with still a few years to go before all the troops come home.

Afghanistan's Taliban regime was ousted in a couple of weeks by a U.S. force of 410 men (110 CIA operatives and 300 Special Forces), led by the CIA's Hank Crumpton. The al-Qaida contingent, led by bin Laden, exited into Pakistan during the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.

Delusions of grandeur, or whatever it was, kept us spending billions on weapons systems for the last war, not the cyber and robotic conflicts of the future.

The F-35 will be the last manned fighter bomber built. And the Pentagon estimates the total cost of owning and operating the fleet of 2,500 F-35s at $1 trillion over the estimated 50-year life span of the aircraft. And that doesn't include the $385 billion the Department of Defense will spend to buy them.

The U.S. Air Force is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots, a fundamental shift for the 62-year-old service.

Few of the U.S. Air Force Academy's 4,000 cadets will ever get to fly manned aircraft. In the future, even aerial dogfights will be fought by drones piloted by remote control from hundreds of miles away.

The Global Explorer, with a wing span the same as a Boeing 747, flies at 65,000 feet for several days, well out of range of most anti-aircraft missiles, and monitors in a single shot an area of almost 300,000 square miles. All of Afghanistan is 252,000 square miles.

Global Explorer costs less ($30 million) and is more effective than a spy satellite. The stealthy and speedy Phantom Ray can dart in and out of enemy territory to destroy a preprogrammed target. The X-47B is the drone look-alike of a B-2 bomber.

There are now 7,000 drones of various types in the U.S. arsenal.

In Afghanistan, neither old nor new bells and whistles will prevent Taliban from coming back, albeit "reformed" with pledges to keep out those like bin Laden and their terrorist mobs. In fact, al-Qaida fighters took a powder during the battle of Tora Bora 10 years ago. And killing Afghan guerrillas wasn't why friends and allies originally signed on.

Tweet

Related Links
The Economy