The appropriations bill includes an extra $2.5 billion for the C-17 cargo plane and $1.7 billion for a destroyer that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon do not want. The Senate did omit funding for the alternate F-35 engine, but it appears conferees on the authorization bill will approve $560 million for the project, making it likely funding will slip into the final appropriations bill when the House and Senate work out the differences in each version. Unfortunately, these decisions come at the expense of the troops in the field: $2.4 billion has been cut from the Pentagon's requested operations and maintenance budget.

On the upside, Senators should be congratulated for turning back repeated attempts to provide additional funding for the F-22. They properly nixed a new presidential helicopter. The president and Secretary Gates deserve credit for opposing these wasteful and unnecessary programs, and members of Congress appropriately followed their lead.

Beyond the F-22 and C-17, beyond individual engines or ships, we need a renewed emphasis on cost containment in military procurement. A 2008 GAO report found that 95 major systems had exceeded their original cost estimates by a total $295 billion during the period between 2001 and 2007. Congress effectively paved the way for a continuation of this wasteful status quo by overruling Secretary Gates on several important decisions.

Gates continues to push for sensible procurement reforms, but genuine cost containment is likely only within an environment of shrinking defense budgets. Under that alternate scenario, defense contractors who are best able to meet stringent cost and quality standards will win the privilege of providing our military with the necessary tools, but at far less expense to the taxpayers. And those who cannot will have to find other business.

Such hopes are naive. Even multilateral sanctions have an uneven track record, at best. It is difficult to convince a regime to reverse itself when a very high-profile initiative hangs in the balance, and Iran's nuclear program clearly qualifies. It is particularly unrealistic given that the many years of economic and diplomatic pressure exerted on Tehran by the U.S. government have only emboldened the regime and marginalized reformers and democracy advocates, who are cast by the regime as lackeys of the United States and the West.

But whereas sanctions are likely to fail, war with Iran would be even worse. As Secretary Gates admitted on Sunday, air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities would merely degrade and perhaps delay, not eliminate, Iran's program. Such attacks would inevitably result in civilian casualties, allowing Ahmadinejad to rally public support for his weak regime. What's more, the likelihood of escalation following a military attack--which could take the form of asymmetric attacks in the Persian Gulf region, and terrorism worldwide--is not a risk worth taking.

The Iranian government must be convinced that it does not need nuclear weapons to deter attacks against the regime. It is likely to push for an indigenous nuclear-enrichment program for matters of national pride, as well as national interest. The Obama administration should therefore offer to end Washington's diplomatic and economic isolation of Iran, and should end all efforts to overthrow the government in Tehran, in exchange for Iran's pledge to forswear a nuclear weapons program, and to allow free and unfettered access to international inspectors to ensure that its peaceful nuclear program is not diverted for military purposes.

While such an offer might ultimately be rejected by the Iranians, thereby revealing their intentions, it is a realistic option--superior to both the stalemate of feckless economic pressure and the horrible ramifications of war.

President Obama has a very difficult task, however, if he expects to invest the United Nations with renewed credibility. The UN is a weak and fractured institution, whose limited power and authority has been steadily undermined by a progression of U.S. presidents, both Democrats and Republicans. We should not forget that President Bill Clinton explicitly circumvented the UN Security Council when he chose to intervene militarily in Kosovo in 1999. Clinton's evasion of the UNSC established a precedent for future military intervention that the Bush administration happily capitalized upon to send troops into Iraq in 2003.

Susan Rice, our current UN ambassador, endorsed this approach in 2006 when she called for U.S. military action against Sudan. Prior UN approval of such a mission was unlikely, but ultimately unnecessary, Rice argued at the time, because of the precedent set by President Clinton in Kosovo.

For American policymakers who have demonstrated such disdain for the UN in the past to now profess great respect for the institution should not surprise us. The UN is only as relevant as the member states wish it to be. In areas of common concern, the desire to cooperate and compromise may temporarily trump concerns over protecting state sovereignty and preserving freedom of action to deal with urgent security threats. In most cases, however, we can expect the member states, with the United States in the lead, to pursue policies that they believe (not always correctly, as we learned in Iraq) will advance their security. And if the UN weakly sanctions such actions after the fact, or refuses to do so, that will only reveal its irrelevance.

The Raptor's whopping price tag—$356 million per aircraft counting costs over the life of the program— and its poor air-to-ground capabilities always undermined the case for building more than the 187 already programmed.

In the past week, Congress has learned more about the F-22's poor maintenance record, which has driven the operating costs to more than $44,000 per hour of flying, which is well above those of any comparable fighter. And, of course, the plane hasn't seen action over either Iraq or Afghanistan, and likely never will.

If Obama is serious about getting a handle on the enormous federal budget deficit, confronting Congress over the clear wastefulness of the F-22 is certainly a good place to start.

A rash of recent bombings and terrorist attacks have raised fears that violence has been kept down by the U.S. presence, and that it will spike as our forces there are drawn down. There are valid concerns that Iraqi security forces are not up to the high standards of the U.S. military, or that Iraq could lapse back into civil war. But those risks will be there if U.S. troops stay for five years, or 50. The future of Iraq lies with the people of Iraq, and the Iraqi government, and it is well past the time when they must take the reins.

Of course, the same thing could be said of many other countries and governments around the world. If President Obama lives up to his promise to end the war, and bring all the troops home, it could signal a willingness to truly change the course of U.S. foreign policy in a direction that advances U.S. security, and at far less cost than our current strategy.

Americans want, and will support, change. What they should not tolerate is the status quo: countless solemn pledges of burden sharing -- of allowing others to stand up so that we can stand down -- that are never fulfilled. For decades, the United States has been in the business of doing for other governments what they should be doing for themselves. Now would be a good time to start to change this pattern.

Iraq is a test case for this change. Nothing that happens there should divert us from a new course.

That said, I thought the president hit the essential points without overpromising. He did not ignore that which divides the United States from the world at large, and many Muslims in particular, nor was he afraid to address squarely the lies and distortions — including the implication that 9/11 never happened, or was not the product of al Qaeda — that have made the situation worse than it should be. He stressed the common interests that should draw people to support U.S. policies rather than oppose them: these include our opposition to the use of violence against innocents; our support for democracy and self-government; and our hostility toward racial, ethnic or religious intolerance. All good.

Two particular comments jumped out at me (the speech text can be found here):

1. The president clearly stated his goals for the U.S. military presence in Iraq. He pledged to "honor our agreement with Iraq's democratically-elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July," "the removal of our combat brigades by next August," and "to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012."

This might not seem like much. As noted, it is the established policy of the U.S. government and the Iraqi government under the status of forces agreement. Some recent comments by Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, however, implied that U.S. troops might remain in Iraq for a decade. I'm glad that the president cleared up the confusion.

2. President Obama wisely connected U.S. policy in the 21st century to its founding principles from the earliest days to remind his audience — or perhaps to teach them for the very first time — that the United States was not now, nor ever has been, at war with Islam, or with any other religion. George Washington affirmed the importance of religious equality in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. President Obama quoted John Adams, who saw no reason why the United States could not enjoy good relations with Morocco, the first country to recognize the United States. When signing the Treaty of Tripoli, Adams wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims."

But the president also drew on the Founders to convey a broader message. They believed that the new nation should advance human rights and the cause of liberty by its example, not by military force. Some of our recent leaders seem to have forgotten that, and a few pundits have actually scorned the suggestion. The president wisely cast his lot with the earlier generation, quoting Thomas Jefferson who said "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

A key test case is the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute, where the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank is the key stumbling bloc to a resumption of serious negotiations.

The president will also want to talk about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. In the latter two cases, the president should reaffirm that his overriding objective is in helping the Iraqi and Afghan governments defend their own people, and that the U.S. government does not desire an open-ended military presence in either country.

With respect to Iran, presidential elections are less than two weeks away, and President Obama isn’t alone in hoping that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s days in power are numbered. But Obama was right to take a wait-and-see approach to Iran, and he should urge other countries in the region to do the same until after June 12th.

Finally, in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, President Obama has previously stated the U.S. government’s opposition to the expansion of Israeli settlements. He might now spell out what additional steps he is willing to take to stop this activity, while at the same time emphasizing that the United States cannot want peace more than the parties to the conflict.