> As if those two things are mutually exclusive. Why would they be mutually exclusive? What exactly is the U.S. doing in Germany, or Japan, or Bahrain? If the

> As if those two things are mutually exclusive. Why would they be mutually exclusive? What exactly is the U.S. doing in Germany, or Japan, or Bahrain? If the U.S. tries to slow operations of "bombing terrorists", then that necessarily means that there is not much use for those bases. I'd be fine keeping some bases in Europe and in Asia (Japan, SK, Australia, Philippines, etc.) basically for the purposes of helping to train our allies and for joint maneuver training, but do we really need so many bases around the world? And if we're going to do that, how should the costs be split? I think people like to pretend these bases are solely for U.S. benefit, but every time we try to leave there's a huge uproar over it. Just like now in Germany when Trump said he was going to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops. Germany didn't say: "please do, we don't really need them" as I'm sure you certainly noticed. > Just like the healthcare debate, what if I told you that you can have both a private system and a public system? The only way that this is even remotely similar to the healthcare debate is the subsidization of drugs for most of the rest of the world (similar to defense). When the US (not if) switches to single-payer drug prices across the world will go up, and availability for new vaccines and therapy will be reduced. The amount of which is to be seen. Besides that, there is legitimate discussion on the pro and cons of single-payer and I find myself wavering between the two. But the overarching thing that matters here is that it's an internal US matter. Frankly, I don't see why it should be anyone else's business what we decide to do. People spending all this time talking about it should focus more on their own countries and improving them instead.