The war in Iraq was completely irrelevant to the war in Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan was based on concrete evidence of Taliban support of al-Qaeda, and could be argued as necessary. However, there never was any evidence that Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks, and no investigator found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, Saddam Hussein was very opposed to al-Qaeda, and it is questionable whether the organization even had a foothold in Iraq prior to the United States invasion. All the war in Iraq has done is waste billions of dollars and inspire more hatred of the United States in the Arab world. It destabilized the already testy Middle East and allowed terror to proliferate in the disorganization that ensued.

War is not a game, and those who think otherwise are dangerous. War should never be used as a testing ground for any nation's military; it is not a secure, contained environment. It is an exacting occupation that has real monetary and human costs. That you are willing to go to war just to demonstrate the United States's military hegemony is a disturbing thought, one that George W. Bush probably shared when he embarked on this misadventure. A cavalier attitude toward war is what got the United States stuck in its longest foreign occupation in its history. "Training the military" is an excuse and nothing more; there would be much less of a need to engage in your perception of training if jingoists and war-mongerers did not goad the United States into conflicts.

It is unbelievable that you would reference China's Cultural Revolution as an example of war's benefits. The Cultural Revolution is widely considered a huge failure that damaged human rights and the political atmosphere in China, and even the Communist Party of China later determined that it was an error. War does not contribute to a nation's military, economic, or political wealth. It harms the reputation of the military, and does not even help "train" it. The soldiers who are sent to battle may die, and those who survive are often left with debilitating disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder. Although war may temporarily stimulate the economy by boosting defense companies like Honeywell and Lockheed Martin, it ultimately wastes billions of dollars and leaves the economy in a much weaker state when it ends. Economic booms persist when they take place in peacetime; Bill Clinton's presidency experienced a long peacetime surplus, long after the shadow of the Gulf War faded from relevance.

The only reason that the United States's defense spending is so great is that it inappropriately sees itself as the world's policeman. Your attitude of "let's go to war just so we don't waste the weapons" is amazingly naive and simple. War should never be used just to relieve a country's military surplus; that only creates a vicious circle in which the surplus in increased thanks to increased defense spending due to war. Certainly, military action will not succeed in Iran or North Korea. History serves as a guide for a potential armed conflict in North Korea: if the United States could not even beat the 1953 Chinese army in the stalemated Korean War, it could not possibly imagine succeed militarily in the present in North Korea's mountainous territory. Iran's territory is even more difficult. The solution to these rogue states is not military action; war's intent is not to preserve United States military hegemony; armed conflict is not a game.