You should go back and look at the debates at the time. In the case of Iraq, the argument was that a tax was unnecessary because the war would be short, of modest cost, and that most of that cost would be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues after the war. It's a similar story with Afghanistan, except the cost was modest (15-20 billion a year for the first five years) so a tax wasn't deemed necessary. Tax increases were not considered after that because we were always just a Friedman Unit or two away from winning or leaving....This brings up a very important point that I try to keep raising. The Americans were not averse to something like a war tax being imposed. We would have gone for it. The political elites were afraid to ask us to do it.
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