Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
Sorry, I should have made this clear in the OP: Gates' defense budget proposal for next year does NOT entail an overall reduction in the size of the DOD's budget. In fact, it's actually $20 billion larger than this year's defense budget. Money will be cut from many programs, but just as much money will be added to other programs. So we're talking about a reshuffling of money within the DOD budget, away from high-tech weapons systems and towards counterinsurgency-oriented programs, rather than an actual spending cut.
Oh, well there goes that part of my statement...

In that case, I have to say this is awful, not to mention terribly pessimistic. Ideally in a few years we'll be out of those countries and won't have to deal with insurgents again for a very long time. It is poor strategy to take investments out of programs that will help us in the long term and pump those investments into solutions to a short-term problem that isn't even really that big of a problem.