Obama's Wife & the War in Iraq

Yesterday I listened to an NPR interview of Barack Obama's wife while I commuted home from work. She made several good points with respect to his position regarding the war in Iraq. To paraphrase, she said instead of fighting a war in Iraq we could be spending the money on improvements to our educational system, and child care and health care systems.

Every family must work from a budget to stay solvent and make good investment decisions for their future, such as retirement, home ownership, education, etc. It makes good sense to look at the extraordinary expense incurred during this war, which is going on for more years than anticipated/planned, and assess alternatives. Had the many billions of dollars of investment in "rebuilding" Iraq been instead invested in improvements to US child care and K-12 educational systems, imagine the gains that could have been (might be) made? One big example: Information management systems could have been implemented, improved, and standardized to the benefit of children, parents/guardians, teachers, administrators and agencies.

Mrs. Obama's perspective has changed my own with respect to how our government is choosing to allocate funds -- it gets down to prioritization within a limited budget. Where does education stand in the list of priorities for 2008 candidates? This will be an interesting way to evaluate candidates throughout this year and next.