As a former naval officer, I like to believe I have an appreciation for the national security interests of this country. There is, however, a bit of conventional wisdom I'd like to challenge and it is the idea that spending more money of defense automatically makes us safer.
For example, if we continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary weapons and this excessive spending, in turn, contributes to our exploding national debt could it be that the growing interest payments to our Chinese benefactors will be a bigger problem in the long run? It is a classic case of unlearning by learning to see what isn't there.
Also, is it possible that our soldiers, in well-intentioned efforts to protect our freedom by searching out insurgents in Iraqi and Afghan villages, might actually create more future enemy combatants every time they inadvertently kill an innocent civilian? If we are to unlearn we must always hold in our mind that the opposite might also be true.
