

War means more defense contracts, more defense contracts means more defense contracts in their districts. Which means more jobs, and that looks good at re-election time.
If the world were a game of Civ 6, the US would be full bore in to the domination victory condition. We never left the wartime economy and we don’t know how to.
We fucked.
Because the entire army went home, the US wouldn’t allow them to work in security, fired many of those that were working in security, and then did a big ole surprise Pikachu when the army just kind of became an insurgency.