1990. at first george h.w. bush and bill clinton begin to reduce the military because there was no longer this existential threat to our citizens, and then dick cheney and the other knee o'cons purr said george bush they can use the threat of terrorism as the functional political ee kwiv lent of come nation. the terrorists are terrible people, and i am very pleased that we are fighting against them, but they're not hitler, and they're not stalin. they don't threaten our existence as a country. they're threatening our lives. we have to fight them back, but that threat was blown up beyond the reality. so we got back into excessive military spending, including the two wars. i think what's happened finally is the american people understand there is no power in if world that comes remotely close to threatening our existence. they see how the iraq war backfired. it accomplished almost none of what it was supposed to, except it did get rid of saddam hussein.