Over the past several months, conservatives seemingly made headway convincing a good portion of the US public that Congress may not be able to produce a national health care plan that will not bust the budget - something that President Barack Obama has promised not to sign. And then came Afghanistan.

    Conservatives almost had the nation convinced that despite the laudable goal of improving the overall health of the nation, insuring everyone is simply too costly. There's no money to save lives, to prolong life or to heal those who would otherwise die or live in deteriorating health, but out of the blue, there will be money for Afghanistan just as every year our brave and courageous political leaders of both parties manage to find hundreds of billions for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

    So, here's the equation: Money to save lives? NO! Money to kill? YES!

    As is well-known in this recession and in this economy, the biggest losers are the young because the similar equation is at work: No money for education, but plenty of money for war and more war. Plenty of money for bombs, but not books.

    How did the values of this nation get this skewered? The truth is, more than oil, the nation's leaders are spiritually addicted to war. Always have been, i.e. Providence, Manifest Destiny and Divine Mission. However, war in this country has always also had its secular counterpart - the idea of US exceptionalism and its need to spread "democracy." It has also always been aided by linguistic jujitsu: War is actually peace. This is not a page from former President George W. Bush's warped lexicon. Truthfully, all of history's despots have made the same claim; the more war, the more peace. Thus, the nation inherits not simply an insatiable thirst for war, but a spiritual imprimatur to go with it.

    At the core of this ideology is dehumanization. As long as US lives are kept to a minimum, the nation's leaders do not have to account for the killing of hundreds of thousands of the "enemy." The loss of life is irrelevant - especially with the use of drone technology - as long as leaders employ the use of phrases such as peace, democracy and national security.

    But dehumanization is old news. Back to the economic argument about the nation being too broke to afford health care or it being a crime to saddle the next generation with permanent debt because of Obama's intent to impose a government-run socialized and rationed health care system.

    As tempting as it is to call it Bush-logic or Bush-math or the world according to Bush-Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, the truth is, we are now long past that era. Yet, under President Obama - and despite his Nobel Peace Prize - we continue to live under the same nonsensical policies that have brought us to the brink of bankruptcy. Worse, this administration continues to support virtually all of the Bush-Cheney war policies. This includes defending the unchecked right of the executive to trample upon the Constitution - all under the guise of national security and "keeping the nation safe." This also includes shirking from his constitutional responsibilities in terms of holding the former administration legally accountable for foisting upon the world a clearly illegal war.

    It defies logic how the nation's political class manages to discuss the war(s) and health care reform as though they were unrelated. The actual price tag (more than a trillion dollars) on both wars has already far exceeded the projected cost of the president's health care reform. That does not take into account all the added costs from the tens of thousands of veterans who are returning with permanent physical and psychological injuries that in many cases will require lifetime medical care.

    Beyond the moral and political arguments, it makes perfect economic sense to stop both wars. It would be nice if the same politicians who invoke economic arguments regarding the unaffordability of health care reform used the same logic for fighting wars. Perhaps, a fiscally conservative Congressional bill is in order: The United States shall not engage in war unless it is fully paid for; the United States shall not engage in war if it contributes to the nation's deficit.

    Regardless of what the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have to say in regards to health care reform, the majority of the US public still wants the Democrats to find their backbones. The majority will now also hope (push) that President Obama use the moral power of his Nobel to actually end both wars.

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    Rodriguez can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com