Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta outlined a plan to reduce military spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years by a number of means, such as retiring old ships and planes, slowing purchases of new ones and decreasing the number of men and women in the Army and Marines by 100,000.

After the whole debt ceiling fiasco last year and the debt supercommittee’s failure to reduce the budget by the necessary $1.2 trillion, these cuts are a good attempt to reduce spending. The cuts don’t gut the military by any means; the military budget increases by $42 billion from 2013 to 2017.

However, Republican presidential candidates and congressional leaders are not necessarily on board. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “Taking us back to a pre-9/11 military force structure places our country in grave danger.”

At this point, it is fair to suggest cuts. We’re winding down from two wars, and it is no longer necessary to maintain wartime military levels. We spend 600 percent more on our military than the next highest spender, China. We currently maintain 11 super carriers, each with their own task group, as well as an entire fleet of nuclear submarines, unmatched in the world.

So if these politicians are under the impression that we must maintain these wartime levels, they must foresee a war on the horizon. Coming down from the lengthy engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, they aren’t likely to openly admit it.

But a considerable amount of attention has been focused on Iran recently. The country has been accused of attempting to create nuclear weaponry. Iran refutes that accusation, and instead insists that it’s attempting to produce peaceful nuclear power stations.

Does that seem familiar to you? It should. Prior to invading Iraq, it was a widely held public belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, or was attempting to acquire them. Upon invasion, we discovered that Iraq did not possess them, and we have spent the past eight years attempting to quell the resulting insurgency and install a stable government.

If we were to attack Iran for the same reasons, we may face a similar end situation. While Iran is stronger than Iraq was, it is still no match for the military might of the United States. We spend a full $600 billion more on our military than Iran does. However, if it poses so small a threat, and we cannot confirm its possession of nuclear technology, why do we continually talk about the threat it poses?

If we continue to assume it will develop and use nuclear weapons, we will soon be faced with the prospect of war with Iran. If you don’t believe it, watch the State of the Union address. Congress erupted in applause when President Barack Obama said military action was an option against Iran. They sat silent when he suggested the possibility of peace.