J.D. Tuccille on the Case for Shrinking the Military

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Lee tank
U.S. Army

An old saying has it that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's probably fair to say that when you have a honking huge military machine, everything looks like…Kosovo? Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Well, a handy target for some expensive ordnance, anyway. If you want everything to stop looking nail-ish, it's a good idea to put that hammer away. And if we want Syria—let alone the next target of opportunity—to stop looking like the latest good place for the U.S. to install new craters, writes Reason 24/7 Managing Editor J.D. Tuccille, we probably need to reduce our military's ability to reach around the world at will.