Comment: Federal budget - Unrelated to war, per se,

(I'm neither defending our current involvements nor rate of spending), but when the issue of the defense budget came up vis a vis the FEDERAL budget, I think it's relevant to note that the founders considered national security (not federal welfare programs, education, healthcare, etc.) the FEDERAL government's primary responsibility. I once bought a pie from a company that had on the box a "pie chart" of federal spending, deploring America's misguided priorities that we spent so little on education vs. the military - disingenuous for three reasons: education is a state, not federal, responsibility (technically, federal spending should be "0"); education spending is the total of local, state, and federal spending (most of which is local); except for Switzerland, we pay more per pupil than any other industrialized nation (while at the bottom of the barrel in achievement - spending isn't the issue). Regardless of valid ways to decrease federal spending, I'd expect that national defense would appropriately remain the federal govt's greatest expenditure.