As the United States advances into the second six months of the administration of President Barack Obama, an interesting push and pull of domestic and foreign affairs priorities is under way, with the conclusions at this point far from clear.

The prime contenders are health-care reform and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or, to boil them down to one, the alleged needs of the military. At the risk of sounding excessively mercenary, the currency with which this conflict of priorities is being waged is money.

There is a decent argument that, looking at the state of the U.S. economy, infrastructure, education and health care, it is high time that Americans received a peace dividend. A peace dividend is money that a country is free to spend to meet its domestic needs, as opposed to money that it has to pour into its defense budget to finance overseas wars or an overly large military force.

Americans were not permitted a break at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 because the Cold War against the Soviet Union was still under way. When the Cold War ended in 1991 with the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, oilman President George H. W. Bush took America straight into the first Gulf War against Iraq, clearly an oil war. Still no peace dividend.

The 9/11 attacks, nine years later, required a sharp, decisive response. The United States joined with local forces in Afghanistan and drove al-Qaida and the Taliban out of the country. The next logical step would have been to support a civilian rebuilding of Afghanistan. Instead, America under President George W. Bush launched another war, in Iraq, this time completely unjustified and unprovoked and based on false premises. It wasn't even an oil war if the results are anything to go by.

Now here we are eight years later in Afghanistan and six years later in Iraq on the clock of a new president, still fighting and paying for two wars that are expensive, both in terms of American lives and cash. The Iraq war is estimated to have cost $668 billion; the Afghanistan war, $222 billion.

Would we be at the highest level of national debt we have ever reached -- $11.4 trillion -- if it weren't for the constant wars, the continued high defense budgets, the absence of any real peace dividend since before 1940? Are we a people who accept -- or even welcome -- constantly being in a state of war that gobbles up our money and kills our human resources?

That is certainly not the picture of the United States and ourselves that we profess to carry close to our hearts. Does anyone really like sacrificing our sons and daughters unless it is absolutely necessary as it was in World War II, might have been in Korea, probably wasn't in Vietnam, definitely wasn't in Iraq twice and probably isn't either in an extended Afghanistan conflict?

Can't we see the cost that is extracted from our own well-being and ultimate strength as a country by these wars and expenditures on expensive military hardware? It might be that Mr. Obama sees it that way also. The returns are still very much out on that question.

It is hard to figure out exactly where he stands on such matters. His insisting -- successfully -- on cutting seven extra F-22s out of the defense budget last week was trumpeted as a mighty victory on his part. The fact that it probably was a mighty victory is bad enough. The fact that the U.S. Air Force already has in service or on order 187 F-22s at $137.5 million apiece, none of which have been flown in anger, including in Iraq or in Afghanistan, is what the late radio journalist Paul Harvey would have called "the rest of the story." The other part of the rest of the story is that to get the seven extra F22s chopped out, Mr. Obama had to promise to proceed with yet another round of fighter aircraft, the F-35, spreading financial joy wherever it will be made, whether America needs it or not.

Then there is Colombia. The Obama administration is seeking to expand the U.S. troop presence there. Over the past decade Colombia has received more than $6 billion in U.S. aid, provided in the name of narcotics interdiction and counter-insurgency. Colombia has continued to fight rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia since 1964. It isn't clear why that struggle matters to the United States, except to retain a U.S. military foothold in South America.

Colombia is not alone in Latin America in that regard. The armed forces in Honduras ousted its elected president a month ago. The Obama administration criticized the coup d'etat but, in defense of a base the United States uses in Honduras and the training it provides the Honduran military, has not administered a response which still might be effective in reversing the coup if done sharply and clearly. It is fair to assume that the reason is because the Department of Defense is busily protecting its assets in Honduras, in spite of the crude, old-fashioned Latin American coup its military carried out.

Then there is continued U.S. support and increased cash to an ugly undemocratic regime in Kyrgyzstan to retain access to an airbase there. Vice President Joe Biden last week tried to give a U.S. military guarantee to support shaky Ukraine and Georgia against Russia without actually doing so. Russia's logical question is what is U.S. policy, improved understanding, as promoted by Mr. Obama, or provocation, which seems Mr. Biden's path?

The bottom line, for Americans and foreigners alike, is whether the new administration is demilitarizing or further militarizing U.S. policy in the world and at home?

The signals at this point are mixed indeed. One normal result of mixed signals in football is botched plays. We definitely don't need that.