Bob Gates responds to Noah

Or something (emphasis mine):

"Some will say I am too focused on the wars we are in and not enough on future threats," Gates said at Pentagon press conference this afternoon. "But, it is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk – or, in effect, to 'run up the score' in a capability where the United States is already dominant – is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take."

For years, the DOD and its allies in Congress have been given essentially a blank check. The Cold War-era "hawk" defense establishment, which declined in influence slightly during the Clinton years, was given a massive shot in the arm after 9/11, not even counting the exorbitant expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan that the military was allowed to keep off its own books. Defense policy planners proposed ever more extravagant ideas like the shallow-water destroyer or the flying laser cannon, to which the Very Serious People whose job it is to put the kibosh on needless spending simply nodded their heads and harumphed.

Why? Because advocating a reduction in military spending is political suicide. Propose closing a base, anywhere in the US, and the legislators who represent that area are going to fight to their last breath to stop it. Starting a new weapons system, even one that we don't particularly need, is incredibly easy compared to stopping it (witness the Osprey, the program-that-would-not-die). But these types of cuts are necessary. Thus spake Yglesias:

Relative to his predecessors, Gates and Obama are trying to put less emphasis on expanding the technological gap between the United States and other major countries, and put more emphasis on relatively flexible systems, on the military’s human capital, and on the ability to do low-intensity operations.

Exactly. We pour billions into producing the nth-generation jet fighter or science fiction-inspired weapons, while cutting relatively inexpensive programs like training our troops how to deal with civilians in a war-torn country. This isn't fighting the last war, it's not even reducing our ability to fight the next one. This is about putting the defense budget back to work giving our military things it actually needs to be effective and stopping the people who use it as a slush fund for defense contractors and their allies in Congress.