I just wanted to do the math and see what the defense budget would cost us if we actually paid for it. You can make an argument that we do and that most of the deficits are due to ‘needless govmunt spending’ but even with the Ryan budget we will have a total deficit of more than $5.7 Billion US over the next 10 years. So even those who support that budget admit the ‘needless govmunt spending’ can’t all be eliminated. So let’s just see what we would all have to pay if we actually paid for it.
I think that the place to start would be to find out how many people would actually ‘bare the load’. So we have to divide the US Defense Spending 2012, $645 Billion, by something. If we divide it by the total US population of 313 Million then we get fact that we will spend ~ $2,000 / person this year. That is ~ $2,000 each for every man, woman or child. If we go down the column we finally come to the fact that out of the 313 Million only about 33 Million of us pay any appreciable amounts of income taxes (yikes!) and if divide the 2012 defense budget by that you get ~ $19,500 each.
So, if split it evenly, each taxpayer would pay ~ 19,500 each and since the average individual income in the US in 2012 was ~ $49,000 the average American would need to pay ~ 40% of their total salary just for the military! What does that person really pay? - $6,300 total. What would you have to earn in order to pay the average income tax needed to cover the defense budget? - ~ $103,000
Of course, there is no way to measure fairness I just wanted to put this spending in perspective.
Also note that if you are a Democrat or a Repub the draw down in Iraq doesn’t mean the end of defense spending as we’ve worn out an entire generation of weapons that have to be replaced and left the arms and legs of many of our heroes scattered across 2 countries and we have care for them for many years.

‘If you want to fight a war without bullets … … vote Democrat’
‘If you want to fight a war and not pay for it … … now … . . vote Repub’
‘If you don’t want your head to explode due to cognitive dissidence … … demand Simpson – Bowles!’