Quite a turn of phrase, the military as "national codpiece."

That made me guffaw quite a bit. Convinced the military is always incredibly prepared for whatever the last conflict they faced was. The next? Not as much.

Fred On Everything:

"...Do the aircraft carriers intimidate North Korea? No. Iran? No. China? No. For this, a trillion dollars a year?

The reasons for the mediocrity are clear enough. First, the Pentagon has become a contracting agency for buying gorgeous and elaborate arms of little relevance to the wars the US fights. (If the Martians attack, we’ll be ready.)

Second, the US is no longer a nation of hardy country boys who grow up shooting and loading hay bales into pick-ups for spare change. (For the uninitiated, hay bales are heavy.) I often see headlines such as “More than two-thirds of Texas schoolchildren flunked the state's physical fitness test this year…” If Texas has gone all soft and rubbery, you can forget about Massassachusetts. The American pool of hardy, manipulable kids without too much schoolin' isn't what it was. The lack of troops of course pushes the Pentagon toward more pricey gadgetry and greater imbalance..."