Homage to a Government

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it’s all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

That was Philip Larkin’s poem from 1969 - on Vietnam, entitled "Homage to a Government." And America’s leadership is disappointing now for different reasons. “Lack of money” has never been a concern with this administration. The position on military spending has rather been – money is no object.

As the economy has grown since the seventies, those annual upward ticks of growth have ballooned military spending naturally, since there’s a larger and larger bucket from which to draw. But the unnatural part has been an attitude change with regards to money and priorities.

The last time I checked on the National Priorities Project link, the Iraq War has cost a total of $537.8 Billion. $15.8 Billion of that total was paid by my current state of Minnesota. The tradeoff for those dollars – that same figure could have been spent on health care for 4.5 million people (that’s just shy of the state population, 5.2 Million).

It’s true that money has been an influence on the Iraq War – as we’ve spent and become aware of those kinds of trade-offs, the more America has called the purposes of our presence there into question. But politics, not money, will (hopefully) pull our troops out of the region (or at least divert them to a more rational, resolute mission).

My own homage to the government will truly begin after a different fiscal moment of truth: do we deal with the deficit and count “lack of money” as the reason we avoid thorough reconstruction of the regions? Or do we devote the same “money as no object” mentality to healing what we’ve hurt? I attended the unveiling of the Obama headquarters in Minneapolis this morning and volunteered my Friday afternoons until election day to help out in the office and put in some time at the phonebank. I already donated a small amount of money, and would love to be able to give more, but I will devote my time until.