John Stossel’s article in the Aug. 13 Times about wars being a waste is right on target, but he makes one premise which I find inexplicable. He points out that Mitt Romney is vehemently against the $500 billion cuts to the military proposed by President Barack Obama, and then states that defense is an area where he thinks the Democrats could make cuts in view of America’s rapid path toward default, but also that Democrats “rarely cut anything.”

Huh? Is that not completely contradictory?

However, he then enumerates some of the main instances where the Pentagon has deployed troops unnecessarily and killed many innocent people, creating new enemies and possible added terrorism. Stossel further cites Obama’s choice to leave our troops in Afghanistan until 2014 and spend billions there after we have failed miserably after more than a decade and untold billions.

His last statement sums up the path we must pursue. “It needn’t cost so much to protect our shores while staying out of other peoples conflicts.” I suggest reading this article if you haven’t.

To stem the gross waste by the Pentagon it will be necessary for all citizens to prevail upon their members of Congress to not only support the $500 billion cuts over 10 years (which is little considering its current budgets) but to make further cuts. It will take a massive grass-roots effort to sway members in both parties since many of them are beholden to members of the military industrial complex for support.

So let’s bring our troops home and use them in the future only in case the United States is in danger.

Jim Scharnagel
Gainesville