W.D. Ehrhart

Sanitizing American History

by W.D. Ehrhart In September 1814, as Francis Scott Key stood on the deck of a British warship watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry, he was inspired to write a poem that eventually became the “Star-Spangled Banner.” We hear that song a lot these days: at every football game from middle school to the NFL; at NASCAR races and hockey games and commencement ceremonies, and, well, at just about any public event that attracts more than three Americans. I wonder how many of my fellow citizens know that Key’s original poem contains not just the stanza we sing, but three additional stanzas, one of which …

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Afghanistan: Who’s Responsible?

by W.D. Ehrhart Surprise, surprise! Fox News and the Republican Party are blaming President Joe Biden for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the horrific scenes of terror and confusion at Kabul Airport in the final days. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—born in 1965—calls the evacuation “the biggest U.S. failure in my lifetime” (Saigon fell in 1975. Well, I’m just sayin’.) Senators Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn are demanding that Uncle Joe resign. Endlessly mindlessly Talking Head Tucker Carlson called Biden “the supposed president of the United States.” Nevermind that Donald Trump brokered a treaty with the Taliban promising the withdrawal of U.S. troops …

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Afghanistan: Vietnam Redux

by W.D. Ehrhart Way back in March and April of 1975, I watched with profound sadness but absolutely no surprise as the South Vietnamese army (ARVN)—with only a brief exception at a place called Xuan Loc—turned tail and retreated without a fight in the face of a North Vietnamese offensive, and the government the U.S. had installed, paid for, and supported for two decades collapsed like a house of cards. Eight years earlier, I had gone to Vietnam as an 18-year-old Marine believing that I would be defending the freedom-loving people of South Vietnam from the communist aggressors invading their country. I encountered, over and …

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God, Guns, & Ginny

Well, of course it was righteous. Bear any burden, pay any price, what you could do for your country. Godless communists, after all. You may have been only seventeen, but you’d seen them already in Hungary, Cuba, Berlin. Something had to be done, and someone would have to do it. There is something about a thatched-roof hut in the middle of rice fields, burning, a mortally wounded woman softly keening, child dead in her arms, that can’t be blamed on Chairman Mao, Castro, Lenin, or Das Kapital. Heavy artillery flattened that home. Ours. Our guns did that. Long before I reached my thirteen months, I …

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Afghanistan: The Graveyard of Empires

by W. D. Ehrhart I’ve never taken any pride in my service to my country in Vietnam back in the 1960s. When people thank me for my service, I think about what I did in Vietnam and want to tell them to go see a priest. But I’ve always taken a perverse delight in having participated in this country’s longest and stupidest war. Kind of like being a pre-2004 Boston Red Sox fan or a post-Jim Brown Cleveland Browns fan. Sadly, even that small pleasure was taken from me when the U.S. war in Afghanistan finally eclipsed the longevity and stupidity of the American War …

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It’s Time to Dump the Filibuster

by W.D. Ehrhart Let’s take a look at the Republican Party this spring of 2021. We have Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who pumps a raised fist on January 6th in support of the MAGA insurrectionists. We have Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who likens smashing windows and beating police with American flags and hockey sticks to a “normal tourist visit,” and insists that the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol behaved “in an orderly fashion.” We have Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who says the Justice Department is “harassing peaceful patriots” who came to DC on January 6th to exercise …

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