We have been involved in two "wars" over the past 9 and a half years. Iraq, an unnecessary military conquest and occupation - it had nothing to do with the Al Quaeda attack on the US - and it had NO weapons of mass destruction at all - and the Afghanistan venture.

The total expenditures of those two adventures has come to above 2 and a half trillion dollars.

The real true expenditure has been the over 5,000 United States lives lost in the process. That's not even counting the coalition losses, or the huge loss of Iraqi and Afghan lives.

We did a wonderful thing when the US helped the Afghan Northern Alliance kick the crap out of the Taliban and seize the country back in late 2001. Then was the time we should have passed the baton to the Karzai regime and said, "So long. It's yours now."

But we have a habit of not doing that.

There are still over 100,000 US military in Europe, over 70 years after the end of WW II. They are still there 22 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain and 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There are US troops, airmen and sailors in Italy, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Spain, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Djibouti, Cuba (Gitmo), Oman, Egypt, Bosnia, Turkey, and I suspect in a few other countries, some of which were once part of the old nemesis, the Soviet Empire.

None of those aforementioned nations pay for the use of our forces to "protect" them from whatever they or we think may threaten their security. US taxpayers foot the bill entirely.

I am not an isolationist, but when I hear and see the gnashing and hue and cry that is going on in the national political arena about the huge deficit, I wonder if the pols even understand how the deficit got that large?

We never paid the cost of the Vietnam adventure. It was simply refunded by Treasury bonds, sold to whoever wanted to hold the bonds, and then the country looked around for more adventures to spend the money on.

We never fully paid down the costs of the Korean War, or even WW II, the BIG ONE. The bonds were always rolled into our national debt.

When I hear some politician promise to cut the debt I want to reach for my nine iron and take off his lips.

They never live up to their promises. Soon as a new administration gets the power they go looking for another adventure and fund it with debt, just like now, back then and forevermore.

There is no easy solution, except revolution.

It is time for change... (Heard that before?) to change the whole system.