I appreciate it, Rip. I don't get Satch's infatuation with trying to call me a boomer. I'm 36. It's bizarre.
A point of clarification: I'm not talking about supporting conventional forces being deployed there. I never supported conventional forces in the theater. I worked with the community built to go bump in the night, and they were more than adequate to win the fight on the ground. They did. We didn't need conventional forces beyond close air support and some logistics regionally. In fact, we re-geared all of our conventional forces for occupation and severely limited them in their primary role: conventional near-peer warfare. Eastern Europe in the 80s shit.
Isolationism doesn't work either. The Middle East and Southern Asia is a mud hole that, whether you like it or not, needs to be stomped out occasionally. So stomp it out quickly and go home. Reference the Barbary Pirates wars. I'm not into nation or democracy building, either. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
I'm also not mad about the past. I saw this coming from years ago. I'm furious about the future. It looks like we were both right yesterday, Rip. China is already threatening war with us today if we don't completely pull out of Taiwan. I'm tired of us being right. I'm also tired of the hurr-durr Isolationist libertarians thinking you can stick your heads in the sand and everything will be fine. Do that, and the Serpent (Islam) or Dragon (China) WILL swallow the world. And I put my money on China because they're not afraid, at all, to actually turn the Middle East into a glass parking lot.