Why Charlie Wilson's War Couldn't Happen Today

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.

Comments

[willgardner]

You and Fox News are so out there and such liars that you make valid the positions taken by commentators on this site and other supposed progressive web sites which are so factually wrong they defy belief.

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.

[willgardner]

The CIA creates a myth, Charlie Wilson, to lull the tax slave into a sleep while they commit terror and atrocities all for a huge profit.

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.

[willgardner]

First off Mr. Fund how much more bipartisan could this government be? Democrats send the bills the President asks for. He signs them into law.

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.

[Bluedanube]

John Fund is part of what is wrong with American politics. He's not part of the solution but part of the problem.

[HeevenSteven]

The S.U. was a failed state economically, and politically; There is no evidence that Afghanistan hastened it's demise.

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.

[bobh]

While it made for an entertaining movie, what was being depicted was foreign policy made by freelancers without concern for the long term consequences, a dangerous thing.

It would have been preferable to have let the Russians and the jihadis grind each other to pieces unassisted.

[jrizal]

Sounds like a lot of people here are nostalgic for the good old Cold War days when the world was divided into the Western Allies and the Communist bloc and Warsaw Pact armies faced their NATO counterparts at the border between West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

[AnotherunhappyDemocrat]

Whereas we should obviously give credit where credit is due, meaning that "Charlie Wilson's War" most certainly helped us bring down the Soviet Union with far less destruction than any of us could have imagined back then, blowback is blowback, no matter how hard one denies it. What we are facing today is indeed a consequence of that blowback. While no Afghan was involved in 9/11, the resistance in Afghanistan did not consist solely of Afghans. We did help train those we are fighting today. The sooner we understand this, the better we will be, and the more likely we will prevent these problems in the future.

[totallynext]

sad

[tiggersthotfulspot]

We've still got plenty of bipartisan support for exporting weaponry and killing poor brown skinned people who never did us any harm. Not to worry, Mr Fund, not to worry. All those Scoop Jackson Democrats become Neocons and Lieberman Democrats... they're still there, running the empire into bankruptcy.

[TJS]

Charlie Wilson could do a lot worse than being portrayed by Tom Hanks. Hanks could probably play a serial killer or mass murderer and make him likeable.

[ArchAngel]

Very depressing.

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.

[VicPerry]

Wow, is this post ever propaganda. Too much American support went straight to the most extreme mofos they could find. I remember watching a CIA guy on TV about five years ago complaining that the now-America-hating bunch who had received so much assistance didn't know the meaning of gratitude (actually, I think it was worse, as if the whole people or culture didn't even have a word for gratitude) Boo freaking hoo mr. spook, what DID you expect. The foreign policy history of the US since WWII (and maybe before?) should have taught these bozos to think more long term and less expediently. However, "long-term" is apparently not a term in the political vocabulary. Despite the claims of this post, versions of "Charlie Wilson's War" are the meat and potatoes of American foreign policy, and damn the consequences.

[bradford]

So I gather from the aforementioned screed that
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!

[bronceye]

Helping Afghanis defeat an already floundering Soviet invasion was a good idea because...­..........­...???? Certainly not for the results. Unless, of course, you like cocaine(CIA slush fund).