Last week, a CNN Poll found 71 percent of respondents felt that spending on the Iraq war (totalling more than 400 billion dollars to date) has hurt the U.S. economy and 66 percent opposed the war altogether.

When the presidential primary season began in January and polls began to show that more Americans were worried about the economy than the war in Iraq (despite overwhelming opposition to it), I began thinking about the old butter-versus-bullets debate; however, I don't think it is that simple anymore.

Nor do I believe that either party has sufficiently addressed our post-9/11 economic and national security needs. Instead of resisting large Department of Defense and Veterans Affair (VA) budgets, perhaps we need to accept, anticipate and incorporate them into our economic prospectus as a nation. We cannot expect to fight terrorists "over there"--presumably indefinitely if the past seven years are any indication--and not be prepared to take care of our servicemembers (and their families) in the process. Nor can we expect to maintain our status as an economic super-power if we lose focus on the domestic needs of our citizens, including housing and education.

What we are seeing, in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the economy, with the VA and with the military, can all summed up, in my mind, in three words: "emergency spending bill" (or alternately "supplemental spending bill"). We have funded all of the above with one or the other immediate (read: short-term) funding mechanism. This has allowed our elected officials to avoid doing the one thing that really needs to be done: integrate the reality of the 9/11 into our federal budgetary process, and that includes military engagements AND the VA. If taxes have to be raised in order to do this, so be it. (Freedom isn't free, nor is it cheap.) Then maybe American voters will finally decide to act on the opposition that they share with pollsters on the phone. Or maybe not.

Either way, if we are going to continue to wage these wars abroad on multiple fronts in multiple countries, then America is going to have to start thinking long-term when it comes to maintaining our national security, strengthening the economy, and providing for the common needs of our citizenry.*

This is going to have to be done eventually and I would be interested in hearing how these candidates propose we go about doing it.

* (And yes, the Supreme Court of the United States has long held that our Constitution directs the Government to provide for the common needs of our citizens, such as emergency medical care and public education. See the Preamble of said document:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.")