O Samsarians! Read and weep of your folly. From a book review of "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War," by Andrew Bacevich:


"Reeling from a newfound sense of American weakness, military officers seeking to recover lost prestige and autonomy, neoconservatives enthralled by Wilsonian rhetoric, and religious leaders transfixed by an apocalyptic reading of the cold war reached the same conclusion, namely that American military strength had to be restored, and once restored multiplied several fold. The culture industry followed, with 1986's Top Gun representing the apotheosis of Hollywood's newfound love affair with the American fighting man. (Lengthy discourses on Top Gun and Rambo: First Blood Part II make for some of the most entertaining moments in an unfailingly serious work.) These currents redounded to the advantage of a small clique of defense intellectuals, several of them associated with the RAND Corporation, others high-ranking civilians in the Pentagon, who had envisioned new forms of war fighting that promised to transcend the cold-war stalemate. Taken together, the result has been a vastly more expensive, more celebrated, and more frequently deployed military."

Public acceptance underlies this increased use and stature of the military. While all organized societies require self-defense, things have gotten just a little ridiculous.