This is the Cato Daily Podcast

for Monday, November 1st, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Neoconservative lament of late

is that our military budget might be cut.

Leading Neocervatives have argued that it would be a mistake to cut military

spending even in these anemic economic conditions.

Chris Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, says their

complaints presume that our military should be used globally in

peacetime and for aims it really wasn't designed to achieve.

It almost seems funny as if some hobgoblin has bothered various neo-conservative thought leaders and told them you

better look out the military budget is about to get cut even though it doesn't seem like at least in the short run that that is there's much of a threat of that.

President Obama has doubled down in Afghanistan. We're winding things down a little bit in Iraq.

All of the cuts from... finding things down a little bit in Iraq.

All of the cuts from announced by Secretary Gates

have been restructuring, small, not really that much, not like what we saw in the 90s. Why the concern?

Well I think they're concerned for two reasons.

One is that there are a number of pressures kind of all coming to bear at the same time on

spending in general.

You know, these are things that we here at Cato have been tracking for a very, very long time, but they appear to be more,

they're just kind of increasing an urgency, and that's all, again, to be expected, combine that with a fairly widespread public anxiety about

spending about deficits and debt you know again this is something that's come

...