...came out and said:

'we're taking all of our military forces out of countries around the world. no more occupation of foreign places. we're really sorry for all the damage done over the years, go about living the way you'd like from now on.'

what would be the reaction?

HA, you gotta better chance of hitting lotto without playing

i know it's hypothetical, but...

But i like my toys i shall never part with them !

Some people would be happy as hell. Some people would be freaked the fuck out.

I imagine South Korea would be a bit concerned, along with Taiwan... Really, wherever we have bases in countries with neighbors they are afraid of.

you need an explanation with this.

ill take this one PD


he means hell will freeze over first

or bush will be blamed for freezing over hell

damn beat me to it

if you mean that we should take all resources and attention away from external situations and into internal situations...then i think we can finally start getting back to basics.

...like putting more funding into education which i believe would get this country back on track. everything will start falling into place then...we would be a better country/society and therefore a better world.

this of course will not come without challenges...it will be extermely difficult and probably shouldnt be done with one swift stroke but more of a slow, strategic, and methodical plan.

it can be done...

isnt that the whole point? to "freeze over hell"

if you're asking whether it would diminish zealots desire to wantonly murder our citizens - my answer would be it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference.

My guess is that there is actually a fair amount of stability provided to the global community by the presence of our military bases in many of the countries we are in. We aren't without our faults, but as someone else posted I'm pretty sure S. Korea likes having us around.

Well, I see no direct answers to the question, but I do see a whole lot of avoiding the topic.

It's a debate forum. We paw over ideas all the time that we all know will never happen until hell freezes over. Why can't we debate this too?

OK.

I think that we would gain a very fair amount of goodwill from many moderate people, especially Muslims, around the world in the short term.

South Korea and Japan would collectively shit their pants.

The Iraqi "government" would collapse and sectarian civil war would ensue resulting in the deaths of a million or more Iraqis. Militias, if not actual armies, from neighboring states, most notably Iran, would intervene and it would devolve into a regional war crippling oil production in the entire Gulf region. Kingdoms and Emirates would fall leaving armed Islamist groups wielding the greatest power in the region. Said moderates whose goodwill we had gained would be suppressed.

The resulting oil shortage would lead to major inflation in the US and the entire industrialized world, despite the raising of interest rates to try to keep that inflation in check.

Somebody else can take it from here.

That's the first thing I thought of when I read the first post.

Including what punkdavid said, fragile democracies that rely on our presence in certain regions of the world would become targets to regimes that seek to impose their totalitarian form of government on others. For instance, leaving Iraq would leave that country wide open for Iran to ensure a Shi'ite power in the Middle East by flowing into Iraq and giving major support to the Shi'ites. Lunatics like the President of Iran would then control a major part of the oil in the middle east. Such an imbalance would not be acceptable and very dangerous.

Isolationism is a very appealing philosophy on the surface, but it is just not practical in this day and age. IslamoFascism is spreading throughout the world and we are in the beginning stages of World War III. Our military presence in parts of the world, at the least, puts ongoing pressure on governments and ensures the safety of fragile democracies that promise freedom....the same freedom that the Islamofascist terrorists want to do away with. There are a growing number of voices from the cut and run crowd, but these people have a shallow knowledge of the dangers we face if we pull out of world affairs and live under the delusion that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will keep us safe.

It's funny how the responses went "fragile democracies would be in trouble, extremists would take over..." yadda yadda yadda, and then the rest of the response: OIL.

Seriously, I wonder what the "winner" issue is in the minds of politicians...all I know is, I used to blame fanatical religion for most of the worlds problems...now, I think that perhaps black gold has more to do with it...

China invades Taiwan, Kashmir explodes, warlords in Somalia, DRC, Sudan, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone go more trigger happy than usual, the Saudi Wahabists overthrow the House of Saud and take over control of the world's biggest oilfields, Israel loses the massive support and starts nuking its neighbours in preemptive strikes, and ROK and Japanese people to collectively shit their pants.

And people will blame US.

I really doubt we'd say we were sorry.