It doesn't matter whether you or I would support war, it matters what the population wants, and given a direct assault on US forces and the invasion of an ally,

It doesn't matter whether you or I would support war, it matters what the population wants, and given a direct assault on US forces and the invasion of an ally, 1/2 the US population would be gunning for war and enough of the rest would be convinced. Unfortunately 'some money to helping Taiwanese' would basically be futile, as there wouldn't likely be a way for that to be applied. (Donations are not going to help Hong Kong, now and won't help Taiwan in the event of invasion) It also doesn't matter if we 'abhor war', force is a fundamental part of the equation even in 2021, if you're not prepared to use it in the right context, you'll lose the freedom to have the choice. And by that I don't mean 'You need to carry a gun!' because you don't, I mean we need to be prepared to use the Armed Forces (or force in generally) as is reasonably necessary. And that would effectively be a pretty much necessary case. These conflicts have 'knock on effects' - for example, if Saddam was able to simply roll into Kuwait willy-nilly, there's no reason to believe that Qatar or Saudi wouldn't be next. That, and 'because Oil stability' -> War. It's unlikely the US would respond with an invasion of Taiwan because that would be essentially impossible, but probably there would be a 'war' in the South China sea and a Cold War after that.