For one, the national consciousness would be a bit less xenophobic and a bit more "American" in the sense that we'd be behaving like a child who had never been

For one, the national consciousness would be a bit less xenophobic and a bit more "American" in the sense that we'd be behaving like a child who had never been stung by a bee instead of a grizzly bear that was angry it had been stung by a bee. I'd bet that we'd still have gone to war in Iraq (maybe in 2005 instead of 2003) and have some fraction of the current mess on our hands. The Bush administration was looking for a war with Iraq anyway. EDIT: Maybe we'd be in Iran, also. Hard to say, but there was definitely a big push to get us into a war against them. I'd also bet that we'd be a little bit behind on the whole surveillance state thing, though we might still have a police state. Assuming we did end up still invading Iraq, I can still see the world growing to hate the USA in the fashion similar to what happened.