t he p erils of o ptimism 307prime minister really had nothing more to off er than declarations of
will. Bush, with exponentially greater resources at his disposal, should
have been leading a search for political and military alternatives in Iraq
from the earliest signs of a budding insurgency. Th e Johnson precedent
echoed in another disturbing way, too, when Bush started to ask his
military commanders for the body count of how many insurgents had
been killed. ^
Delegation also requires accountability, of which there seems to
have been virtually none between 2003 and 2006. Retaining Rumsfeld
was an inexcusable error. Each time the defense secretary came under
criticism, Bush rushed to his defense. Th e president refused Rums-
feld’s off er to resign after Abu Ghraib became public, and in the end
only low-ranking soldiers suff ered any punishment for a situation that
grew out of a much broader policy failure. Following the 2004 election
Bush again considered replacing Rumsfeld, but was talked out of it by
Cheney lest the action raise questions about the conduct of the war—
precisely what needed to be done. More fundamentally, the sec-
retary of defense was never on the same page as the president about
the main peace-building objective in Iraq, establishing a democratic
Iraq within a short time frame. Certainly jettisoning Rumsfeld
would have been an admission that the war was not going well, but his
replacement would also have made clear that the president recognized
what most observers were reporting and demanded better from the
people around him.
Th e Diminishing Returns of Fear
Th e Bush administration decided to invade Iraq and fi ght the ensuing
insurgency without first seeking broad popular mobilization back
home. A limited war always poses a political challenge for leaders who
need to sustain popular support, precisely because the confl ict does not
present a direct threat to national survival. Absent an existential peril
to inspire sacrifi ce, rhetoric must be used to generate popular com-
mitment. Yet this in turn makes likely a mismatch between the over-
heated language leaders use to infl ate the stakes in the war and their
reluctance to ask citizens to give up anything of value. Historically,
major conflicts have imposed two burdens on a population, one