t he p erils of o ptimism 309increase the active-duty force. Even so, the limited size of the military
continued to place heavy stress on the U.S. Army and the Marine
Corps in particular.
Initial administration expectations that the Iraq War would not
have a signifi cant budget impact also turned out to be unduly opti-
mistic. Yet, despite the rising cost of the war, the Bush administration
still did not seek additional funds in the regular annual budget process.
In June 2001, Congress had approved the president’s signature
domestic policy initiative, a $1.35 trillion, ten-year tax cut that repre-
sented a key Republican Party objective. Th e president refused to
undo this, even though every previous American war had been
fi nanced by a combination of new taxes and borrowing. Two factors
made it possible to defer paying for the war and instead to increase the
federal defi cit. First, much as Republicans were loath to raise taxes,
Democrats did not want to cut spending on their preferred domestic
programs. Rather than make hard choices, both sides cooperated in
fi nancing the war through various temporary spending measures that
did not trigger existing defi cit-reduction statutes. Second, broader
global economic trends worked to the administration’s advantage.
Lyndon Johnson had sought to avoid picking between guns and butter
during the Vietnam War, but infl ation eventually forced him to accept
a tax surcharge and cuts in domestic spending. In contrast, favorable
international economic circumstances during the Iraq confl ict, such as
the willingness of creditors to fund a growing federal defi cit at low
interest rates, made it possible for the Bush administration to evade
the same kind of reckoning.
As violence in Iraq increased after the initial success, the adminis-
tration discovered that public support for the war was soft. People who
had signed on for the expected quick victory showed much less patience
for the rising casualties infl icted by IEDs and ambushes by a faceless
enemy. Moreover, letting the nation off the hook for paying made for
easy politics but did nothing to link the citizenry to the war. Public
opinion on Iraq began to polarize along party lines. Most Republicans
continued to back the president and the war, showing a lingering faith
in its original rationale—polls found that they had become more likely
to believe that Saddam Hussein had possessed WMD, despite the post-
invasion failure to actually fi nd any stockpiles. Less enthusiastic from