When the right starts talking about Pentagon bloat, big spending cuts loom

I think comments like this one, from conservative heartthrob Mark Steyn, foreshadow big cuts in U.S. defense spending:

. . . The United States has the most lavishly funded military on the planet, and what does it buy you? In the Hindu Kush, we’re taking 12 years to lose to goatherds with fertilizer.

Something is wrong with this picture. Indeed, something is badly wrong with the American way of war. And no one could seriously argue that, in the latest in the grim two-thirds-of-a-century roll call of America’s unwon wars, the problem is a lack of money or resources. Given its track record, why shouldn’t the Pentagon get a top-to-toe overhaul – or at least a cost-benefit analysis?

Just to be clear: I disagree with Hagel on Israel, on Iran and on most everything else. But my colleagues on the right are in denial if they don’t think there are some very basic questions that need to be asked about the too-big-to-fail Defense Department. Obama would like the U.S. military to do less. Some of us would like it to do more with less — more nimbly, more artfully. But, if the national security establishment won’t acknowledge there’s even a problem, they’re unlikely to like the solutions imposed by others.