Let us assume that each and every expenditure of the U. S. government and each and every expenditure of the people of the U. S., as individuals, has been necessary, the only right thing to do, the only recourse to keep the enemies of the U. S. from destroying it. We have, as a nation, and as individuals spent more than we have earned -- president after president, individual after individual. We -- both government and people taken as a collective whole -- have spent more than we have EARNED. If an individual or a nation spends on credit more than it EARNS, that person or that nation can APPEAR to be very successfull for a while. But as the amount of the DEBT exceeds the earnings (which for the nation comes in form of TAX REVENUES), day after day, year after year, decade after decade... it eventually adds up to more than can be paid off in a generation, in two generations, in three. If a group of militant Muslim extremists can spend two thousand dollars on explosives, and give up the lives of a handful of their number, and cause the U. S. to spend MILLIONS on defense... or, if two or three teams of militant Muslim extremists can hijack a few airliners and give up a dozen or less of their number and kill a couple of thousand U. S. citizens and destroy half a billion dollars worth of office space... and the U. S. RESPONDS by spending many billions... ...on CREDIT... ... is is "enough" to make the observation that the enemy is WINNING. If enemies of the U. S. can goad the U. S. into going deeper and deeper and deeper into DEBT, then it need not win a shooting war. A gorilla attacl here, a gorilla attack there, and the U. S. will spend itself to death. How clever. They cannot beat us in a shooting war, but can cause us to bleed ourselves to death financially by keeping us saying, "It is not enough to just stand by and not borrow more and more and more and more to finance shooting wars. If that is the only game in town, then the name of that game is, they eventually win. They cause us to bleed ourselves to death financially. Is THAT the best game plan we (the U. S. government and U. S. citizena) can come up with? When a nation is bankrupt, who must it ask to "forgive" its debts? Do all who believe the costs of large wars are the only right, and reasonable, and courageous thing to do... believe that we can, as a nation, continue to throw more money at problems of national security that we EARN? What are the future consequences in THAT????