Most Americans' image of Congressman Charles Nesbitt Wilson is based upon the book and/or movie, Charlie Wilson's War. According to both of these sources, when Congressman Wilson first became involved in crafting U.S. policy towards Afghanistan, he was living on $700 a week.
The documentary evidence paints a very different picture.
We all know that it was blonde bombshell Joanne Herring (played by Julia Roberts in the film) who recruited Wilson to the "cause of the Afghans." However, it would really be more accurate to state that Mrs. Herring, as Honorary Consul for Pakistan, actually recruited Charlie Wilson to the "cause of the Pakistanis."
What is the "Cause of the Pakistanis?"
Since the mid-1970s it has been Pakistan's policy (not the Soviets') to destabilize Afghanistan and destroy its infrastructure by training, paying, supplying and deploying Islamic fundamentalist guerillas to keep Afghanistan too weak to assert re-negotiation of the 1600 mile border between the two nations, known as the Durand Line. The Durand Line, is named for Sir Mortimer Durand, who arbitrarily drew it on a map in 1893, dividing the Pashtun and Baloch ethnic regions and cutting Afghanistan off from the sea. The people who live along this line do not recognize it, and have been fighting separatist rebellions against the Punjabi dominated Pakistani government since the formation of Pakistan in 1947. If the Pashtuns and Balochi peoples ever achieve their goal of independence or repatriation into Afghanistan, Pakistan stands to lose everything west of the Indus River, in other words, over half of its territory. Though logical, their endless pursuit of the destruction of Afghanistan is nonetheless diabolical.
Follow the Bouncing Drill Bit
In 1978, Joanne Herring, then married to Robert R. Herring, the founder of Houston Natural Gas (later known as ENRON), was offered the position of Honorary Consul for Pakistan to the United States. Mrs. Herring told me that the government of Pakistan first asked her husband to accept the position, but when he declined and recommended her instead, they accepted her, because, as she put it, "They hemmed and hawed, and I'm sure they thought, what can we do? We don't want to offend this man, because they hoped that he might drill for oil in our country."
Coincidentally, also in 1978, two American oil companies, Occidental Petroleum and Union Texas Petroleum, received permission to explore for oil in Pakistan. They had each been granted a 30% share in their Pakistan concession, with Pakistan's national company, OGDC, holding the remaining 40%. In 1981 Union Texas made its first big strike and Oxy's first Pakistan well came in shortly thereafter. The Pakistan Army courteously agreed to truck the crude from the field to the refinery in Karachi.
Senator Humphrey and the Burning Question of Pakistani Control of Distribution
It's commonly known that the United States agreed to let Pakistan control distribution of U.S. assistance to the Afghan Resistance during the 1980s to hide our hand and avoid sparking World War III with the Soviet Union. This policy was known as "plausible deniability." One member of Congress who was very involved with our support for the Afghans was Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-NH, Ret.). Senator Humphrey called the "plausible deniability" strategy "silly," because anyone who cared knew that the Americans were backing the Afghan Resistance. In fact, he stated that, throughout the 1980s, he and other members of Congress were "constantly lobbying, importuning, the White House and the CIA to take more direct control" of the distribution of U.S. assistance to the Afghans, rather than continuing to allow Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency ("ISI") to control it. According to Senator Humphrey, members of Congress were well informed that the factions receiving the lion's share of American largesse were consistently guilty of killing more Afghans than Soviets.
Senator Humphrey's statement begs the question: If members of both chambers of Congress, and from both parties (Wilson was a Democrat), were lobbying the White House to change the policy of allowing Pakistan to control distribution of U.S. assistance, why did the Reagan Administration persist in allowing Pakistan to control distribution of our military, financial and humanitarian aid to the Afghans?
Back to that Bouncing Drill Bit
According to Mrs. Herring, she went to Afghanistan shortly after the Soviet invasion, where she was so horrified by the atrocities she witnessed, and so impressed by the brave determination of the Afghan freedom fighters, that, upon her return to the "free world," she worked feverishly to recruit her powerful friends in Washington to the noble cause of the Afghans. We have all been saturated with the story of how, inspired solely by their desire to evict the evil communist empire in Afghanistan, Joanne Herring, Charlie Wilson and their friends at the CIA defeated the Soviet Union and brought an end to the Cold War.
Provocatively, one of Mrs. Herring's first statements to me when we sat down for her interview was, "We turned to Charlie [Wilson], cuz he was an old friend of the oil business."
Later in her interview for this documentary, Mrs. Herring told about how, shortly before George H.W. Bush's inauguration as Vice President, her late husband arranged for a meeting between her and Mr. Bush. She stated that their meeting, which was supposed to be for only 15 minutes, actually lasted for two hours, during which time Mr. Bush was very polite, and didn't say anything. Then, a few days later, at a party in her honor, her lifelong friend, James A. Baker, III (Ronald Reagan's new Chief of Staff), took her by the arm and confided, "We're gonna give 'em a lot of good stuff!"
Wilson + Supron = Wilson + Union Texas
As mentioned above, in both the book and movie, Charlie Wilson's War, we are told that Mr. Wilson was living on $700 a week. However, his 1981 Financial Disclosures show that, as of May 1982, he was holding between $100,000 to $250,000 worth of shares in an oil company called Supron, which he had purchased in March and September of 1981. On $700 a week? That's a man who knows how to stretch a penny! Coincidentally, in April of 1982, Union Texas Petroleum purchased a controlling interest in Supron, and in October of that year, Congressman Wilson made his first official visit to Pakistan. Owning a plump share in Pakistan's oil business could not fail but to heighten the good Congressman's sympathy towards the Pakistani point of view. Such sympathy is further evidenced by the fact that, upon retiring from Congress in 1996, Wilson promptly became a high paid lobbyist for Pakistan, to the tune of over $300,000 per year.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former oil & gas lobbyist explained to us, "That was how it was done." This same gentleman told how James A. Baker, III completely controlled all information received by President Reagan. He described how, anytime the President was speaking with someone who might impart information contrary to Baker's preference, either by phone or in person, Mr. Baker interrupted the President's conversation.
And what about the venerable Mr. Baker? James A. Baker, III's 1981 Financial Disclosures reveal that, on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration in January of 1981, his new Chief of Staff took the time to sell his daughter's shares in Occidental Petroleum. Occidental was, and is, a publicly traded company, while its Pakistan partner, Union Texas, was still privately held at that time. Though far from incriminating, the timing of this particular stock sale at least merits a raised eyebrow. However, the 1981 Standard & Poor's Directory shows that Baker Botts (founded by James A. Baker, III's great-grandfather) was the primary law firm for Union Texas Petroleum Corp. Baker Botts is among a handful of powerful Houston law firms which establish corporations to serve the purposes of the members of the firm -- a format which is precisely opposite to the traditional legal-business relationship.
Joanne Herring and Charlie Wilson have been celebrated as the heroes of Afghanistan, but the Afghan people see them in a different light. After a studio screening of Charlie Wilson's War, when asked by the producers what he thought of the movie, one Afghan gentleman replied, "That asshole destroyed my country." But then, that's what the Pakistanis were paying him for.
http://strategicthought-charles77.blogspot.com/2010/02/charlie-wilson-was-man-bigger-than-life.html
Elvis Presley, Captain Bligh
They're heroic or pathetic
Depending on which book you buy.
'Charles Dickens? Jackie Gleason?
Burn 'em all! Turn up the heat!
If there's no truth, use innuendo!
This is Revisionism Street!"
--Bob Seger
Wilson and Murtha were Democrat heros featured big time in the Democrat National Convention that nominated Obama. As soon as they died the so called "Progressives" could not wait to trash them horribly. And they wonder why they are not a majority???
Of course Pakistan got something to help Charlie, do you think Obama is not giving them stuff today for their help fighting the Taliban???
Thats the real world, you want someones help then you got give them something, oil, money, military assistance, etc.
One day a Zen monk walks into a village and there's great jubilation.
He inquires what's happening and villagers tell him they've acquired a new horse; a symbol of wealth and status. They tell him how great it is that they have this horse and all he does is shrug his shoulders:
"we'll see..."
He comes back a few days later and a group of the villagers have crowded around an injured boy. The zen monk finds out that the boy was riding the new horse, fell off and broke his leg. The villagers shakes their heads, worried and tell him how terrible this is. He shrugs:
"we'll see..."
A few weeks later the monk returns to the village; this time there is great commotion...a war has broken out. All the male villagers must go and fight, except for the boy with the broken leg, which has not yet healed. 'Isn't it wonderful that he broke his leg...now his life has been spared', exclaim the villagers. The monk smiles and shrugs:
"we'll see....
The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. You know, after the Soviets assassinated the president of Afghanistan, invaded the country, and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
That...
We trained them we armed them, we ran them against the soviets, what did we think was going to happen when we left. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Pakistan... we couldn't hold that coalition together but we should have stayed and built schools and infrastructure. The last quote from the movie is something like, "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world...and then we f'cked up the end game." - Charlie Wilson
J
Well you found “one†who said that, interestingly in the US.
Again, the movie was Hollywood, watch the History Channel version.
There were very few Afgans who supported the USSR being in their country back then, but Arab groups have polled Afgans today and a significate majority support our efforts against the taliban, not all but most see our presence as a good thing.
Charlie wanted to stay involved in Afganistan and rebuild it, but with the USSR defeated support in Congress for funding dried up.
OBL did not plan to attack the US until after our troops set foot in, in his view, the Holy Land near Mecca. OBL liked Charlie's work against the USSR. If the USSR kept control of Afganistan and we still fought the First Gulf War OBL would have still turned against us.
"As the world now knows, his efforts and exploits helped repel an invader, liberate a people, and bring the Cold War to a close. After the Soviets left, Charlie kept fighting for the Afghan people and warned against abandoning that traumatized country to its fate – a warning we should have heeded then, and should remember today," Defense Secratary Gates said in a written statement.
Sometimes I wonder if Pres Obama isn't suffering some of the same, owing to how his administration has become something totally alien to his campaign rhetoric. We sure expected a lot more progressive programs and actions. Who is feeding Obama "only what they want him to hear"?
"James A. Baker, III completely controlled all information received by President Reagan. He described how, anytime the President was speaking with someone who might impart information contrary to Baker's preference, either by phone or in person, Mr. Baker interrupted the President's conversation."
I've also seen video clips of Donald T. Regan (Sect. of Treasury and later Chief of Staff) controlling Reagan, barking commands at Reagan close behind him....really makes you wonder who we really vote into power and just what is going on behind the curtain.
Thank you so much for correcting my mistake. I appreciate it. Fanned.
He did his great works out of sight, not for glory, not for fame.
He did it for the simple reason it was the right thing to do.
If we only had a few more like him today, the world would be a much better place.
He will be greatly missed. God Speed Charlie.
The movie with Tom Hanks was Hollywood, but Charlie liked it.
If you ever get the chance watch the History Channel program on Charlie Wilson.
All the real characters, including Charlie and the Ex-president of Pakistan, tell the real story as it happened historically.
Or read his book.
As the Ex-president of Pakistan says at the end when asked how a ragtag group defeated a superpower his answer is three words: "Charlie did it".
Charlie wanted to stay involved in Afganistan, but with the USSR defeated support in Congress for funding dried up. Those small minds again.
Melissa, Charlie wouldn't hate on you, he fought small mind his whole life, he would probably buy you a drink, and wish you well.
Is there no room left in the world for innocence?
The man who is wedded to altruism always seems to find himself cuckolded by avarice.
Someone answer: Has there been a war, in the entire history of the human race, that wasn't about transferring wealth to those "more deserving of it?"
That quote itself is from a Roman Senator. Doesn't really mean it's "OK' i guess but it's how the real world works and has been so for all the recorded history we have, about 5000 years worth. The earliest writing we have from China and Egypt speak of playing tribes on their borders against each other. People like Charlie Wilson and leaders we have today have to work in the real, "not ideal" world. Dosen't make them bad people, unless of course you argue all Humans are really "bad people" which may be true.