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What We Can and Can't AffordBy John Ketwig (reviewer)
What We Can and Can't Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism, and American Life Let me say it right up front. Bill Ehrhart has been a friend for many years, and I consider him the most articulate spokesman of all Vietnam veterans. I am always eager to read his latest offerings, and this collection of his essays is especially welcome as we try to understand America in the second reign of Donald J. Trump. It seems everything we believe about our country and its place in the world is under siege, and values such as compassion, understanding, and simple kindness are discouraged. Bill Ehrhart grew up in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, the son of a protestant clergyman. One evening a few years ago, I attended a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels concert in Perkasie and took advantage of the opportunity to drive by his father's church and Bill's boyhood home. Even after fifty years, Perkasie is a picturesque suburban bedroom community on the outskirts of Philadelphia, with tree-lined streets and houses designed and constructed to withstand harsh winters. Bill Ehrhart was a Marine while I was in the Army. He was wounded at the battle for Hue, while I was never wounded except emotionally. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College, a Master of Arts from the University of Illinois, and a PhD from the University of Wales at Swansea, UK. I have a high school diploma and a lot of "experience" in various segments of the automotive business. He has retired from teaching English and history at the Haverford School in Haverford, Pennsylvania. For a time, I taught Toyota technicians how to deal with the latest technologies. Ehrhart has a wife and daughter; I have a wife, two daughters, and three grandchildren. We are both members of Veterans for Peace and VVAW. He has written about ten highly-regarded books, some memoirs, and lots of poetry, and he was featured in several documentaries and TV shows about the war in Vietnam, including Ken Burns' eighteen-hour series for PBS TV. General Westmoreland saw the war in Vietnam as "an opportunity to test our latest weapons and tactics." In that respect, and only in that respect, the war was an overwhelming success. Approximately 58,315 Americans were killed, along with somewhere between three and five million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. Thousands more were maimed, mutilated, burned, punctured, tortured, poisoned, or simply disappeared. We dropped more tons of explosives on Vietnam than were used in all of World War II, about 80% on South Vietnam, our ally and an impoverished agricultural country the size of New Mexico. Napalm swallowed up whole villages in huge balls of flaming gasoline, and a rainbow assortment of chemical weapons like Agent Orange poisoned thousands of acres of fertile farmland and caused birth defects and cancers among the Vietnamese peasants and Americans who handled the stuff. Similar destruction of Laos and Cambodia provided America's military-industrial complex with enormous quantities of "test results" even as it devastated those countries. Laos survived the most intense bombardment in the history of warfare. Here at home, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300,000 Vietnam veterans have taken their own lives since returning from the war. Today, unexploded ordnance continues to maim and kill thousands of Southeast Asian peasants. Bill has returned to Vietnam twice since the war ended, and I have not. What does all of this have to do with Bill Ehrhart's collection of essays? A large percentage of his work, whether essays or poems, has always been about Vietnam and what the war did to him. Of the 65 essays in What We Can and Can't Afford, at least 15 are about the Vietnam War. Another 26 or so are about the state of America, democracy, and the political environment our children and grandchildren will inherit. Ehrhart is brilliant, thoughtful, and incredibly transparent. His outpourings about war in general and the Vietnam War, in particular, are focused upon the horrors, waste, pain, and unfair nature of modern war. In his Preface, Ehrhart writes: "the opportunity to write about a wide variety of topics and issues have afforded me the opportunity to keep my head from exploding in the face of the increasingly ugly circumstances we are living with today in our nation and the world." Bill Ehrhart has not been without criticism for sharing his observations and opinions. In this very newspaper, in the Fall of 2023, a VVAW member critiqued What We Can and Can't Afford, writing "that is the culture we live in now. Ehrhart may rant and rave about it but can't change it. Can we 'afford' it? Can we do something about it? Do we have alternatives and enough people who can commit to such changes to make it possible?" Later, the reviewer backtracks a little: "this is a tough road to walk. I pay homage to Ehrhart for writing what needs to be said and for having the clarity to say it, but, like climate change, I want to do something about it constructively." Writing is Ehrhart's construction project, and there are unlimited opportunities available to others. I hope Bill Ehrhart will continue writing far into the future. He is, above all, a thinker, and he has not allowed himself to be swallowed up by the torrent of pseudo-conservative or neoliberal warmongering that has become prevalent in our politics and, yes, our culture in the past ten years. Yes, we heard the sword rattling of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and paid it little mind. Over the years, that perverted perspective evolved into Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, and ultimately, Donald Trump. Today, in 2025, it is tempting to throw up our hands and capitulate to the likes of Elon Musk (with his chainsaw), Stephen Miller, Marjorie Taylor Green, Jim Jordan, Linda McMahon, Ron DeSantis, or Kristy Noem. But no, we read Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Michael Moore, Bill Astore, or Bill Ehrhart. The conservatives and corporations have bought up American politics. However, there is still a strong undercurrent of opinion and literature that reflects compassion and faith in the basic goodness of the American common man and woman. The Democratic party has lost that perspective; newspapers have either sold out or shrunk to an ineffective shadow of what once was a definitive industry. However, those progressive theories still exist … and gather votes from many baby boomers and the Millennial generations. Bill Ehrhart offers an endless stream of observations that celebrate our finest American values. His suggestions radiate common sense and even optimism as he informs us of personalities and situations we may not have recognized. His essays are always coherent, thought-provoking, and worthwhile. He recognizes personalities like Paul Fussel, Daniel Ellsberg, Horace Coleman, General Smedley Butler, and one of the originators of VVAW, Jan Barry. He writes about gun control, gerrymandering, turning 30 years old, the group who broke into an FBI building in Media, PA, back in the Vietnam years and stole files, and numerous references to the sad incompetence of our 45th president, who is now also our 47th. He writes about family, PTSD, life in the suburbs back in the sixties, government corruption, and the direction his country, the human race, and the planet are headed. He writes about the people of Southeast Asia and his feelings of guilt for what we did to them. Deep down inside, Bill Ehrhart is just an educated suburban family man who cares. Do his 65 essays chart a course toward a better future for his country and its people? No, but he cares, and he has tried to offer a collection of observations and suggestions that have been fermenting in his soul for many years. Will the world notice? They already have, asking him to submit his opinions in writing to many of the country and the world's most prestigious publications. He has spoken at many schools, colleges, and universities and to civic and social groups. Hey, the time spent reading a book can be worthwhile, but there are no guarantees. I highly recommend you read What We Can and Can't Afford. If you disagree with it, there are 65 convenient places where you can set it aside and look for another book. But, if you are reading The Veteran, I think you will find a treasure chest of ideas that will offset or contradict about 95% of the evening news and the front page of tomorrow's newspaper (if you still get one). I think you will find that Bill Ehrhart has spent much of his life doing his best to shine a light on life in these United (?) States. His descriptions and conclusions, over the past sixty-odd years, have been illuminated and inspiring. Nobody does it better. John Ketwig is a lifetime member of VVAW and the author of ?and a hard rain fell, A G.I.'s True Story of the War in Vietnam, and Vietnam Reconsidered: The War, the Times, and Why They Matter. He is hoping to find a publisher for his first novel.
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