Where's your priorities?

A Web site just for women bloggers, called BlogHer, is asking for women bloggers to write a post on their Red Hot issue for the upcoming presidential election in 2008. I can't resist.

Rather than wax poetic about why I hope my daughters will grow up in a country that respects women enough to trust them to run this country as Commander in Chief, I will stick to the issue at hand.

I'm going to say this once and only once.

Get. Out. Of. Iraq.

There are worse human atrocities happening right this very second. I have to wonder why we are so in love with Iraq's future and not other areas that need desperate help.

Instead of fighting battles in other countries, let's use our military to spread peace where there is none.

I'd like my daughters to learn that rich men in big white houses don't need to use violence any more than poor men in rundown houses in our inner cities.

Instead, I'd like my daughters to learn that our country is truly concerned about Americans by addressing our poverty rate.

Poverty is the basis of all evil. It tears families apart. It drives people to drink and use drugs. It motivates some people to sell drugs. All of the drug business, ultimately, drives people to commit crimes, which causes fear and anger. Crime and the perception of it keeps great American cities gasping for breath.

Poverty keeps our American children in the worst schools that don't offer textbooks to take home and study for tests. It keeps our American children starving at night. It drives our American children to stand watch on corners for drug dealers because they know that he will buy them what they can't get from their own family.

Poverty pressures young families to make bad choices, undeniably hard, brutal choices that involve where to spend the night tonight because they have no place else to go. Poverty has placed amazing weight on America's homeless shelters that are full to capacity with waiting lists upon waiting lists.

Perhaps I'm blind. Perhaps I'm idealistic. But, perhaps some of that money being spent in Iraq could be used here, at home, helping to liberate our own economically disadvantaged and suffering middle class.

And then when our military is needed to protect liberties and freedoms -- and human lives -- it will be available and ready to do so.

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