To my way of thinking and yours evidently WWII was the last war we actually won. Sixty five years is a long time to go without a win. This crap of fighting limited wars with limited objectives gives us a lot of wounded and disabled Vets that get crapped on when it comes to treatment, recovery assistance and job relocation. Our government does not want to pay the incidental costs of fighting a war.
I grieve every time one of our troops gets killed or wounded fighting for a bunch of Muslims who wants to overthrow America. South Korea has a whole bunch of people who want us out of Korea. I am for bringing all of our troops home. Clean the men out of Germany too.
You’re going to have to do a lot more talking to change my mind. I don’t believe our dead and wounded are appreciated by anyone except us.
A vocal minority. The 30,000 troops we have there now are tripwire troops. The South Koreans are quite capable of defending their country. NK has nukes. We must provide the nuclear umbrella for South Korea and Japan so they don't get their own. We have burden sharing agreements with these countries to defray the costs of our presence in those countries including in Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. that are part of NATO. We have made major reductions in our forces and I agree we can go down from the current 80,000 or so that are in Europe now. This is certainly far less than what we had in the 60s and 70s when there were over half a million there.
The US is in decline. We are on the same path of decline as other great powers and civilizations. We are now fighting the battle of guns versus butter, which butter always wins because it has more constituents. The US will withdraw from being a power that can project its forces globally. It will be gradual, but it is inexorable. We cannot afford a superpower military and a welfare state. The military will be the first casualty followed eventually by the welfare state, which will consume all of our resources just to stay afloat. The rest of the world will miss America only after we are gone as a global power. Who fills the vacuum is anyone's guess.