Strong on Defence, Evil Party style
Nobody would do a missile attack on the United States when it was raining or cloudy, would they? Why, that'd be ungentlemanly; the polite way to wage war is to line up and advance in ranks, because only a boor would engage in asymmetric warfare.
And it's not as if that US$50,000,000,000 was going to be used for anything; it was sensible to write the IOUs because otherwise the ink would have gone dry on the Imperial fountain pen.