Local columnist so wrong on defense spending

A few days ago, columnist for the Star E. Thomas McLanahan wrote a piece warning that we--the US--need to absolutely keep our defense spending where it is or, as so many Right Wingers do, he warned we'd lose our strength and power and some such rot. Nonsense. He's wrong on so many levels, it's nearly obscene. First of all, we spend so far much more on defense than any nation on the planet, it's already nearly insanity, by itself. We spend approximately 698 billion dollars, annually, on defense and no other nation remotely comes close to spending that much. And that's just what's on the books. It's fairly common knowledge that, actually, we spend far more than that. China, for instance, if they're our next big threat, only spends $114 billion annually, by comparison. I won't tear Mr. McLanahan's article completely apart here (see link below) but will point out that a) if Europe would pick up the tab for their own defense and b) we stop trying to fight WWII, what with outposts still in Italy, Germany and other spots across the world we don't need and finally, c) if we cut the waste and fraud in the defense budget (see link below), we could easily, easily cut the amount we spend by half--as we should--and so, actually strengthen the country. We could apply that amount to both our debt and our infrastructure (health care, roads, highways, education, etc.) We didn't learn France's lessons on Vietnam and we went in. Big mistake. We didn't learn the Soviet Union's lessons on Afghanistan and we went in. Same thing. Now we don't seem to be able to learn the Soviet Union's lessons, again, on huge defense spending, which actually ended up breaking their nation. Could we please learn from history? And soon? >Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/27/3104282/defense-cuts-and-the-achilles.html; http://news.yahoo.com/panel-widespread-waste-fraud-war-spending-053533054.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures