Quote of the day: Putting the war on a credit card isn't just a moral problem now, says E. J. Dionne Jr.--it's stripped away the president's options

"Believe it or not, winning the war in Iraq was never the Bush administration's highest priority. Saving its tax cuts was more important."
--E. J. Dionne Jr., in his Washington Post column today, "A War Bush Wouldn't Pay For"

Here's some of what Dionne has to say:

The administration's failure to acknowledge the real costs of the war--and to pay them--has put it in a corner.

The president's options in Iraq are severely constrained because our military is too small for the foreign policy he is pursuing. Sending more troops would place even more excruciating burdens on members of our armed forces and their families. And the brass fears that an extended new commitment could, quite simply, break the Army.

Yet, instead of building up our military for a long engagement and levying the taxes to pay for such an enterprise, the administration kept issuing merry reports of progress in Iraq. Right through Election Day this year, the president continued to condemn anyone who dared suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should raise taxes to pay for this war.

I think it would be a mistake to send more troops to Iraq. But for the sake of argument, let's take seriously the idea that doing so might help, as Sen. John McCain has insisted and as American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick W. Kagan argued in a report released yesterday. By not matching the military's size to what we are asking it to do, we have hugely raised the costs, including the human costs, of such a policy. . . .

It has always been true that the administration and its allies couldn't have it both ways. Their illogic has finally caught up with them. They claimed to be against big government so they could justify big tax cuts. But they were also for a big, activist foreign policy, especially after Sept. 11, 2001, which required a big military, and--sorry to break it to you, guys--a big military is a big part of big government. They were not willing to pay for a large enough military, and so now we, and especially our armed forces, are paying for their deficit in logic and courage.