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Bryan
It's about taking care of our country first.
I'm on board with making things better at home. But when you have a military whose effective force dwarfs the combined might of the rest of the world...if you don't take some action when bad stuff goes down, then you're essentially complicit.
Now you could make the argument that the U.S. military is way more large/expensive/advanced than it needs to be. Many people do. Just generally not Republicans. The thing is, if the U.S. were to reduce its military to the "effective level" of a country like, say, China, then it loses the *ability* to act unilaterally. Why? Because, militarily speaking, it's just one of several equals and has to abide by the will of the group. Not because "that's the right thing to do", but because "the group"'s military might far eclipses that of any single member (including the U.S.)
As things stand now the U.S. can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants with no fear of military opposition from other first-world powers. That's not a bad place to be. One consequence, however, is that people tend to do stuff like, oh, fly planes into your buildings.