THIS MAY REALLY HURT AMERICA OVER THE LONG TERM

I've noticed a few op-ed in the WSJ, including one by disgraced former SECDEF Rumsfeld, urging excessive caution about cutting our bloated defense budget and today I learned that the House actually raised the budget!  Back in the late 80s, Paul Kennedy warned us about this:

The more states increase their power, the larger the proportion of their resources they devote to maintaining it. If too large a proportion of national resources is diverted to military purposes, this in the long run leads to a weakening of power. The capacity to sustain a conflict with a comparable state or coalition of states ultimately depends on economic strength; but states apparently at the zenith of their political power are usually already in a condition of comparative economic decline, and the United States is no exception to this rule. Power can be maintained only by a prudent balance between the creation of wealth and military expenditure, and great powers in decline almost always hasten their demise by shifting expenditure from the former to the latter. Spain, the Netherlands, France and Britain did exactly that. Now it is the turn of the Soviet Union and the United States.