Everybody is worried about "American honor," and the calculations can stray far from a prudent course. Especially, the Trump voters, or he wouldn't have had the appeal for "going in and kicking ass." This is the Myth of either "King of the Mountain" or "The Great Roman Empire," where we say it isn't an Empire when it is. And it's the myth which drove the Bush-Cheney hubris. When we talk about myths, the discussion seems "soft" and vague. But there are several mass-psychologies broken down into various groups.
Then, consider the statistical evidence since 911. The successful attacks -- Boston and San Bernardino -- were some two out of a dozen mass killings in the Homeland. The odds of a terrorist attack in Boise are probably less than the odds of getting hit by lightning.
But there is this temptation to spend more and more with less and less effect. If you want to know how we "won" World War Two, then look at the emergence of Management Science and optimization modeling. You don't squander resources in a war; you manage them carefully. If there was some mandate to deal with Saddam Hussein, it might have waited for a long time, but hubris won the day.
Amy Kremer, the fat-girl know-nothing of the Tea Party, and Trump are selling the idea of doubling the defense budget. Then, the pie gets divided differently, while schools, infrastructure, prudent regulatory reform, energy initiatives driven by a federal presence will suffer. My "conspiracy theory" is that this is what they had in mind at the time of the 2001 Inauguration.
Being King of the Mountain has certain costs -- several types of costs. There is the risk that spending more on defense than the top 14 nations will spur an arms race, further increasing costs. There is the risk that excess investment in defense will tempt someone to use those investments imprudently. And then there's the risk that the spending will drive us into penury, especially if taxes don't increase to meet the expenditures. Ultimately, being King of the Mountain tempts other nations to look for a beloved patriot in the armor.
You'll never completely wipe out "terrorism." Today, it could be Islamic Fundamentalist Lunatics; tomorrow, the Murrow Building and a Tea Party or militant fringe.
Instead, what the Trump supporters want is an immediate fix which doesn't exist. And at the same time, Trump is trying to kiss Putin in a Bro-mance.
Our troubles with Russia might be less if Bush had handled the Cold War end differently, and if Congress hadn't focused their attention on a spooge-stained dress. Nobody likes Putin, except many of the Russians. But he is much, much more savvy for his experience than Trump.
Finally, while Amy Kremer and the others lobby for defense increases, the real problem is one of how the money is spent. This is the same phenomenon conservatives point to about education: "Throwing money at the problem." Of course, the logic doesn't apply to their Grand Military Golden Age.
Generally, I observe that the biggest chest-thumpers and hawks are really chicken-littles and sissies. We live in a world of risk, and they won't have any of it, even if spending a trillion dollars more a year reduces that risk by only 1%.
If you want to be the biggest military power in the world, follow Theodore Roosevelt's advice, and speak softly. You can have it all. But why antagonize the rest of the world into courses of action which merely increase excess spending? the problem with all of this, citing both the Bush years and the Trump campaign, is that the President, in making tough talk for the satisfaction of NFL-fan voters, is also broadcasting to unintended target audiences. Bush raised terrorist organizations to the status of nation states with his talk and actions, when the prudent course would be to diminish and humiliate them as criminally insane.
Talk is cheap. Military hardware isn't.
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