For Pete’s sake - there’s a difference in defense vs offense.
Do we need to have 3 carrier groups in the ME area ? Yes, because our short-sighted government has us tied to Arab oil and maintains open borders at home. Would we need 3 carrier groups there if we were energy self-sufficient ? No.
Yes, the navy is a vital institution in the defense of this country, but we don’t need to be all over the globe on a daily basis to defend shipping.
We should take a page out of our early history. Then: Barbary pirates preying on shipping ? Go level Montezuma and see if they continue. Today: Somali pirates a problem ? Go level Mogadishu and see if they continue.
Our biggest problem is that we refuse to use our military assets wisely and to best effect. We use them cruising around the world as a warning. I think we’d get a bigger effect with fewer assets if we just shelled/bombed the trouble spots when they cause trouble. Simply threatening to do so without ever taking action makes us a paper tiger and the world knows it.
We happen to live in a time and place where our biggest enemy is muslim terrorists. But that is not the way it is going to stay. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn't. In the next 20 years, we could end up in a serious shooting war with someone, take your pick of whom. It most likely won't be overmatched arab men who may have guts and emotion but not enough brains to keep from getting slaughtered.
If there is anything, ever that we should have learned from the 20th century, it is that there is evil in the world, it has always been with us, and will always be with us. And we should also have learned that you cannot speak with evil, negotiate with evil, or change evil. Evil views things like negotiation and discourse as weakness.
In this world, we must be ON all the time and engaged. We must be projecting beyond our borders, both economically for us and our allies, but also militarily for our enemies.
I don't know what your military experience is, but I served for four years mostly on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. When we send our carriers to patrol the Pacific or show up off of Lebanon, they aren't just out there to cruise back and forth chewing up money just to show a gray haze colored steel wall and intimidate our foes, though that helps.
Our units are practicing all the time, deploying and training as close as they can to the way they are going to fight. We cannot keep those ships, men and equipment anchored in a harbor and send them out in a crisis to kick some ass. They have to be constantly trained and honed so that when the opportunity arises, we can and will respond effectively.
You inferred that we have been posturing and posing so that the world sees us as a paper tiger. I disagree. Before George Bush took our country into Afghanistan and Iraq, that may have been the case. Not anymore.
Which is why many of the Euro elites hate the United States. It showed them to be the hand-wringing, run-at-the-mouth beaureaucats that they are.