Military Spending

via SULLY we see maybe it's time the US started re-thinking how much money it really needs to be spending on the military (if, of course, Obama eventually runs out of Muslim countries to bomb):

An examination of the latest NATO data shows that in 2010, the United States spent 5.4 percent of its gross domestic product on its military — twice as much as spent by Britain and three to four times as much as most of our NATO allies ... A crucial reason for this gap is that the United States spends almost as much today as it did during the Cold War. Every other NATO country spends substantially less.

I'm not an expert on this stuff, of course I just bullshitted you there and I AM an expert, but a little something quasi-off-topic is that I wonder sometimes what would happen if we DID drastically cut military spending.  I assume that would mean letting go of a ton of troops.  Meanwhile, the federal government can't unleash hundreds off thousands of people back into competitive job markets without having to create jobs to replace the ones it had set up within the military (YES, I KNOW the "magic of the free market" will provide, but let's assume not all of the returning soldiers have planned ahead well enough to have been born into a rich family already.)  Is the military worried it will therein be exposed as a sort of jobs welfare program?