He relates how they celebrated VE Day in Burma: shooting starving Japanese making suicide charges across a strip of road his section was securing. We tend to forget that things are a little different for the men and women on the ground, from the politicians making their fatuous statements.

-- Mal

I don't know, but I pretty much suspect a whole lot of nothing would happen. Well there would be several months of RW outrage. Some countries would applaud us for our innovative approach to world peace. Others would be angry because it would wreck some local economies. TPTB would be upset cuz they would have to pay for their own security. Other than that I don't see how it would make us less safe.

Yup!

Why would that even be a relevant factor? The opposition tends to oppose, trying to satisfy their expectations seems self-defeating.

But, it is a fact of one of the things that would happen.

We could provide government-paid health care to every man, woman, and child in the US.

Paid maternity leave, longer vacations, assistance on keeping a home when there is a rough spot, shelters for people who for any reason do not have a home, free college or technical training, more parks and green areas, free public transportation (mostly buses, not taxis), bridge inspectors, pothole fixers, more money for research on diseases, and free ice cream.

and Germany since the end of WW2

In South Korea, looking at the North Korean Border.

Afghanistan not so much

We didn't build the largest "embassy" on the planet just to pack up and leave. The point was just to get us in there, set up shop, then announce "Lookee! War is over!" A few people will come home, but it will be like Japan and Germany...we'll be there forever. Hate to say it, but it's not a whole lot different than W saying "Mission Accomplished."

and wanted a pony

"come hell or high water" for about 4 years now, even after the US signed a deal in 2012 to keep a military presence in Afghanistan until at least 2024.