A version of this article appears in the December 28 Wall Street Journal
"Charlie Wilson's War," the new film treatment of how a party-hearty Texas Congressman teamed up with other Cold Warriors to humiliate the Soviet Empire in Afghanistan and hasten its end, is a box-office success. After the recent failure of more preachy political films, Hollywood will credit the movie's appeal to its witty dialogue, biting humor and a screwball scene that could have been inspired by the Marx Brothers. But let's hope Washington notes another of the film's lessons: Good things sometimes happened in foreign policy when there was bipartisanship, which now appears to be a bygone concept.
I met Charlie Wilson in his heyday in the 1980s. He was an operator but also a carousing libertine but he was honest about it, promising constituents that if caught up in scandal, "I won't blame booze and I won't suddenly find Jesus."
The Texas Democrat was a liberal on many issues but in foreign policy he called himself "a Scoop Jackson Democrat," after the legendary U.S. Senator from Washington state. And he was fiercely anti-Communist. "I despised the tyranny," he told me earlier this year in an interview.
In 1981, two years after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Mr. Wilson visited refugee camps in Pakistan at the instigation of Joanne Herring, a conservative Houston socialite he'd been dating. There he saw Afghan children whose arms had been blown off by explosives disguised as toys and starving families scrambling to pick up pellets of grain on the ground. "I decided to grab the commie sons o'bitches by the throat," he recalls.
About the same time, newly installed President Ronald Reagan was signing top-secret directives to use covert action and economic warfare to weaken the Soviets. That helped Mr. Wilson team up with a maverick CIA agent named Gust Avrakotos, who hand-picked a team of agency outcasts to funnel weapons to the Afghans. The delicate balancing act that the two orchestrated involved simultaneous support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Mr. Wilson memorably helped seal the deal with Egypt by bringing an exotic belly dancer friend of his from Texas to impress the Egyptian defense minister.
The film offers up a series of foils for Mr. Wilson. The CIA station chief in Pakistan is a bureaucratic weasel who doesn't want to upset the Soviets. When the savvy Ms. Herring demands to know "Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?," Mr. Wilson's instant response is "Well, tradition, mostly." But in the end, Mr. Wilson was able to use his perch on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee to expand covert aid to the Afghans from $5 million a year to, with matching funds from Arab nations, $1 billion dollars a year. House Speaker Tip O'Neill, grateful for Mr. Wilson's stalwart support, gave him a long leash. Other House Democrats, intent on blocking Reagan White House support for the Nicaraguan Contras, were happy to let Mr. Wilson have his way in a far-off land to bolster their own anti-Communist credentials.
Gradually, the operation wore down Soviet morale. In September, 1986 the first shipment of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles reached the mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan. On the missiles' first day of use, three Soviet helicopter gunships were downed. The invaders no longer had air supremacy. "They flew, they died," is how Mr. Wilson puts it. In early 1989, the last Soviet troops pulled out, and the experience convinced many in the Politburo to think twice about putting down rebellions in Eastern Europe. Within months, the Berlin Wall fell without Moscow raising so much as a single AK-47 in anger.
As the film notes, the U.S. failed to follow up on the "end game" in Afghanistan and allowed chaos to develop. Years later, the country fell to the murderous Taliban, who then gave a safe haven to Osama bin Laden. But the film stops well short of blaming the U.S. for creating conditions that led to 9/11. Doing so would be "total BS," Mr. Wilson told me, noting that not a single Afghan ever gave Al Queda a Stinger nor participated in any of the terrorist attacks against the U.S.
Mr. Wilson, who at age 74 is now mending nicely from a heart transplant, is generous with praise for his comrades in skulduggery. "We won because there was no partisanship or damaging leaks," he emphasizes. "Once Ronald Reagan gave us the OK to employ Stingers the war was over. Until my dying day, I'll give him credit."
But he believes that nothing like the Afghan operation could survive today's poisonous Washington atmosphere. Tom Hanks, who brings the dapper, albeit sometimes debauched, Mr. Wilson to life in the film, agrees. He told Reader's Digest that "the constant blaring of the media, from the left and the right, has taken us to a point where there's no legitimate discussion" on serious issues. Indeed, he recently fretted that "Charlie Wilson's War" would be unfairly attacked from the right because he, screenwrier Aaron Sorkin (whose credits include "The West Wing") and director Mike Nichols would be portrayed as "a bunch of Democrats who are taking potshots at the war in Iraq."
He needn't worry. Mr. Hanks and his fellow filmmakers have produced a rousing paean to America's can-do spirit, resisted the temptation to take cheap shots at any current U.S. foreign policy missteps and highlighted how not so long ago one ornery Congressman and a few friends helped change the world.
The great thing about the so called neo-con commentary is that you point to the most despotic, the most insidious issue facing the citizens of the world today. You point to the fact that ALL facets of public discussion are compromised by the same folks that you readily trot out for us to "respect", the Underworld Government.
Front runner, for any party, huh? LOL. I've never seen such B.S. trying to prop up political whores as Presidential candidates. Please. Hillary, Obama, Edward's, Mitt, Gulliani, Huckabee?
Really? Of all of the brilliant people in the world these mental midgets are who we have to choose from? What's the probability?
LOL. Stay asleep Citizen. If you're lucky you won't wake up from your slumber.
Revisionist history 101. Maybe you should revisit the U.S. military Able Danger/Able Warrior red and blue team exercises. You state "Years later, the country fell to the murderous Taliban, who then gave a safe haven to Osama bin Laden. But the film stops well short of blaming the U.S. for creating conditions that led to 9/11. Doing so would be "total BS," Mr. Wilson told me, noting that not a single Afghan ever gave Al Queda a Stinger nor participated in any of the terrorist attacks against the U.S."
First off Osama bin Laden was a major asset of the CIA against the Russians before the Taliban ever congealed. Second, the U.S. Military Industrial Complex has been selling weapons to Eurasia for the past 40 years. Charlie Wilson is incompetent if he believes that U.S. weapons haven't been used to kill our soldiers. And you are a fool to quote him on such lies.
Fools have foolish quotes. Mr. Wilson says "But he believes that nothing like the Afghan operation could survive today's poisonous Washington atmosphere.". Of course again a CIA asset gives us fine fiction. Read congressional testimony. Read the plethora of books documenting the deceptive operations conducted by the Underworld Government (CIA). There are more disgusting holocausts occurring today then any time in history due to the acts of the CIA and the Underworld Government.
Now here's the most subversive idea I'm going to pass along today. As evil as the CIA is. And as evil is the romanticized revisionist history you provide here. You and the CIA are not the most insidious issue facing the citizens of the world today.
No, the most insidious idea is that you provide cover for the "Left" leaning, supposedly "Progressive" media such as Huffington post gatekeeper commentators.
They send him a law with one simple section which he doesn't like and he uses a veto. They bow down and send him the law he wants and he signs it into law. Do the Democrats use the rules of Congress to shut Bush down? No. Do they use these rules to carry out their mandate from the people? No. I call that bipartisanship.
Secondly, you don't really believe middle America would use your judgement in determining a persons character do you? "I won't blame booze and I won't suddenly find Jesus." There are less then six degrees of separation from the Military Industrial Complex coffers and your bank account sir. Qui Bono?
Thirdly, you really need to revisit history. The fact of the matter is that the CIA is used to create fiction for the tax payers, neigh tax slaves. Charlie Wilson is just another fictional account of the horrors that London, Wall-street, Washington, and the CIA create at the tax payers expense every day.
See post 2.
Let's not forget the bipartisanship you address disappeared when a new crop of Repiglicans came in in '94 led by a guy named Grinch, or something like that.
It would have been preferable to have let the Russians and the jihadis grind each other to pieces unassisted.
The public assumed that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on State Dept, Defense Dept, and Intelligence all went into careful planning and analysis with risk analysis, short range and long range goal planning.
Much of the world's problems are due to lone cowboy operations and lack of oversight and planning.
Bhutto's death is a sad example of this.
we should have allowed the Soviets to have Afghanistan and let them continue blowing off the arms of children and there other numerous atrocities.This is all too typical of the leftist mindset and it's all consuming moral blindness.But it should not be surprising the modern Left are of course the spiritual descendents of those who apologized for the crimes of Stalin, Mao, Castro and every other Marxist tyrant who could afford the price of a pair of suglasses.But again their tolerance of these bloodthirsty regimes is understandable.After all they only wanted to help the poor and as Lenin said before you can make an omlet you have to break some eggs!