Ed Morrissey

It goes well beyond recruiting numbers, or even force readiness in the personnel sense. Our Navy fleets are rapidly aging out, and we lack the capacity for replacing vessels to properly meet readiness standards. Without an economy oriented to mass production in heavy manufacturing, we would struggle to replace materiel in every branch of the service while at war. This goes beyond the Pentagon, in fact, and demonstrates a lack of real management of national security on a comprehensive basis since the end of the Cold War. 

But to this point, Rush Limbaugh always put it best: The proper purpose of a military is to kill people and break things, and that's it. Don't use them unless absolutely necessary, but when you do, let them kill people and break things until the need ends. The purpose of the military is not to have them model your latest trendy Soho cultural agenda items.