Are We Getting "Real World" Military Funding or a fantasy budget?

From "The Washington Post"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-military-budget-for-the-real-world/2015/05/17/13a92928-fb1a-11e4-9ef4-1bb7ce3b3fb7_story.html

Real world military funding

Last week President Obama offered Persian Gulf countries an “ironclad commitment” that the United States will “use all elements of power . . . to deter and confront external aggression” against them.

It was just the latest in a series of military commitments and actions from a president who declared in 2011 that “the tide of war is receding” and that the United States could concentrate on “nation-building here at home.”

Obama has ordered U.S. forces to support a Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen; dispatched the Navy to the Persian Gulf to safeguard shipping there; sent U.S. planes on hundreds of bombing missions in Iraq and Syria; and deployed troops to Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe in response to Russian provocation. Last week, his administration said the Navy may intensify operations in the South China Sea to challenge Chinese sovereignty claims there.

There’s nothing misguided about Obama’s great-power activism. To the contrary: It carries a lesson for the candidates who would succeed him. The world depends on the United States, and wishing that we could withdraw — or declaring that we will engage only in regions that we deem vital — turns out not to be a basis for sustainable policy. Had Obama not pulled out too hastily from Iraq, had he not stayed aloof so long from Syria, some of his recent deployments might not have been necessary, and others could have been carried out from a stronger position. Even now the level of his commitment, to the war against the Islamic State, for instance, does not match his policy goals. But he has recognized that withdrawal is not an option.