[NYTr] Charlie Wilson's War: A Tom Hanks Movie We Can All Hate?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Unless there is some awfully subtle satire in this film that absolutely
everyone on the sober left is missing, it looks like Julia Roberts,
Tom Hanks, et al. have made complete asses of themselves, and shame on
them. They're old enough to know better, but probably were paying more
attention to their agents and their careers at the time... Here are a
few of the better, more historically aware commentaries. - NY Transfer]


Counterpunch - Dec 26, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/heller12262007.html

Worst Movie of the Year

Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War

By STANLEY HELLER

Imagine, they made a funny movie about how the US helped turn
Afghanistan into a killing field. It's the film "Charlie Wilson's War,
a ligthearted look of how a skirt-chasing Congressman and a no-nonsense
CIA thug helped bring mountains of weapons and money to the fanatic,
women-despising "freedom fighters" who gave us 9/11. It's certainly
material for a "laugh riot".

To be sure it was the Soviets who did most of the killing. From
December 27, 1979 when they overthrew the government of Afghanistan
until February of 1989 they ravaged the country. By the war's end there
were a million dead Afghans, another 3 million injured, and a whole
generation growing up to think that war and war crimes were the natural
way of life. Soviet land mines still litter the country.

Yet the evidence is that the US government wanted the Soviets to invade
and did what it could to provoke it. According to Secretary of State
Robert Gates 1997 book "From the Shadows" the CIA started giving aid to
Islamic rebels in Afghanistan six months before the Soviets invaded.
This was confirmed and detailed in an interview with Zbignew
Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor in 1998 in the
French journal Le Nouvel Observateur. In the interview Brzezinski
explained that Jimmy Carter signed an order on July 3 of 1979 to give
aid to the mujahadeen and that he (Brzezinski) wrote Carter a note that
same day saying "this aid was going to induce a Soviet military
intervention".

Not that Brzezinski objected. To the contrary this is how he answered
his interviewer's question on whether he had any regrets. "Regret what?
That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of
drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to
President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its
Vietnam War."

Afghanistan would become the next venue for Cold War game playing and
the Afghan people would be the pawns.

Charlie Wilson's role in this whole affair is vastly overstated. After
all it was Jimmy Carter who hysterically declared the invasion "the
most serious threat to peace since the Second World War." If ever a
country was remote and unimportant in world affairs it was Afghanistan,
yet earlier in 79 Carter had seen the total defeat of his boy, the Shah
of Iran, so he had to show macho in some other theater. Hard as it may
be to believe today, Carter portrayed the Russian move into Afghanistan
as the first step to Soviet dominiation of the Persian Gulf and
Americans bought it. Carter created the climate for the massive funding
of the Afghan and foreign mujahadeen. Nor should we forget Ronald
Reagan. His role can be summed up by his colorful statement in 1985
calling the mujahadeen the "moral equivalent" of the US founding
fathers.

Yet there is no doubt Charlie Wilson's enthusiasim was important in
bringing about a flood of money and weapons. Wilson, a Democrat and a
liberal in domestic matters, was a hard core rightist in foreign
affairs. The movie tries to make us believe that seeing Afghan refugees
in Pakistan utterly changed Charlie Wilson, but he was a fervent
anti-commmunist well before that. He was a good old buddy of Nicaraguan
dictator Anastasio Samoza and fought hard to get Carter to stop
distancing himself from the Nicaraguan tyrant. The movie gleefully
shows Wilson calling in favors on the House Intelligence and Defense
Appropriations Committees and gathering half a billion dollars in
weapons for the fundamentalists. The guns and money first flowed
through Pakistan giving the US a way to deny involvement and gaining
the dictatorship's ISI intelligence agency a chance to wet its beak.

The movie makes mention of aid going to just one mujahadeen leader,
Ahmad Shah Massoud. Actually he received virtually nothing. Nearly half
of CIA money went to Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the most hardline of the
mujahadeen. Hakmatyar in his younger days had been notorious for
throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women. You can see why that
didn't make it into the film, very difficult to show humorously.

Wilson's "sidekick" as reviewers describe him was CIA operative Gust
Avrakotos, a man who was "crude and hilarious" according to one review.
He was a "working-class" guy who ignored the stuffed shirts and got
things done. In Greece, where he was posted in the 60's and 70's people
remember him differently. Avrakotos was in Greece when army colonels
overthrew the government and set up a dictatorship. He became the CIA's
chief liaison with the Greek colonels. This fascist regime's best known
victory was rolling over university students with tanks. Its biggest
defeat was getting its ass whomped when it faced real (Turkish)
soldiers in Cyprus. By 1978 Avrakotos was so villified by the Greek
press that he left the country ripe for other adventures.

In the book by George Crile that was the basis for the movie Wilson is
quoted as saying that his greatest achievement in Congress was not
getting the guns to the mujahadeen, but saving aid to the regime of
Pakistani dictator Zia al Haq. The aid was under threat because Zia was
secretly building atomic weapons, and in those days the US pretended to
be serious about the spread of such weapons. It was against US law to
give money to countries building nukes. So every year there was a
battle royal in Appropriations about the aid. Yet Wilson had his way.
Pakistani cooperation in killing Ruskies in Afghanistan trumped the
silly idea that the world should have any kind of handle on nuclear
weapons. It's a pretty funny story yet somehow atomic bombs aren't
mentioned anywhere in the movie.

Mike Nichols who directed the movie had very little to say about the
fact that the weapons we gave the mujahadeen ended up being used a a
long and bloody Afghan civil war once the Soviets left and that the
mujahadeen/warlords mutated into the Taliban and al-Qaeda. "You don't
know the consequences of any act," Nichols told a reviewer. Crap.
Brzezinki knew exactly what he and Carter were getting into. Wilson and
Reagan and the rest knew Hekmatayar was openly anti-American at the
same time they were sending him the Stingers.

At the end of the movie you see Wilson pleading unsuccessfully for a
million dollars for Afghan schools. Then after Wilson ceremoniously
gets an award from the CIA there's a black screen and a Wilson quote
something like "It was a glorious victory and then we f'd up the
endgame." As if a few schools and roads would have made the difference.
"Our guys" didn't much believe in schools. They had the nasty habit of
killing school teachers for the crime of educating girls.

This movie glorying in our "triumph" in Afghanistan fits well in
Washington's current climate where Democrats fall all over themselves
saying Iraq was a mistake, but we should be sending more money and
troops to Afghanistan. Sure, we really need to sacrifice more American
lives for a warlord "Northern Alliance" government that is so hated
that the Taliban is making a comeback

One could imagine another movie about Afghanistan, about real heroic
resistance, about the women of the Revolutionary Association of Afghan
Woman (RAWA). They've struggled against fundamentalism and all the
regimes oppressing Afghanistan since 1977. In a recent comunique they
wrote "Instead of defeating Al-Qaeda, Taliban and Gulbuddini terrorists
and disarming the Northern Alliance, the foreign troops are creating
confusion among the people of the world. We believe that if these
troops leave Afghanistan, our people will not feel any kind of vacuum
but rather will become more free and come out of their current
puzzlement and doubts. In such a situation, they will face the Taliban
and Northern Alliance without their national' mask, and rise to fight
with these terrorist enemies. Neither the US nor any other power wants
to release Afghan people from the fetters of the fundamentalists."

The activists of RAWA work in secret at great peril inside Afghanistan
defending the very basic human rights of women. Theirs is not a funny
story, but one worth telling. I don't expect Mike Nichols to have much
interest, but you can check them out at http://www.rawa.org


[Stanley Heller is chairperson of the Middle East Crisis Committee
(Connecticut) and host of its weekly TV program "The Struggle". He
welcomes email at mail at TheStruggle.org .]


                           ***

sent by Ed Pearl - Dec 28, 2007

Portside - Dec 27, 2007

reactions to a 12/26 article by Melissa Roddy on the film

"Charlie Wilson's War"

by Jack Radey

Uh, Hekmatyar is a scumbag and Massoud was... who again? A
saint?  This arrant nonesense in the movie is not just about
the US "backing the wrong scumbag."  The nonesense is that
the US went riding to the rescue of the poor Afghans, after
they had been invaded by the terrible Soviet empire. Excuse
me?  Is history just silly putty to be formed into convenient
shapes, like Gumby and Wallace&Grommet?  The facts, generally
ignored, are nonetheless stubborn things.

1) Afghanistan existed through most of the Cold War in a
neutral state. Both sides agreed to leave well enough alone,
to make donations of aid, but not to really try to line the
country up on one side or the other of the divide.  For one
thing, there is not a whole lot of value in the country, and
for another... well... do YOU know of any other country in
the world where tribes have inherited ambush sites?  No one,
from Alex the Great on down has had much luck there.  The
terrain is awful for conventional armies, and the people have
this tradition of making things ugly for invaders.

2) After the liberation of Vietnam, with the US on its back
heel in the world temporarily, the Arch Fiend, Henry
Kissinger, decided that the one place to hold on tightly to
would be the Middle East.  The fact that he was an employee
of the Rockefellers... that would be the Standard Oil/Exxon
Rockefellers in case you missed this... of course had nothing
to do with this decision.

3) The tool to be used in the Middle East, since the American
Armed Forces were temporarily unavailable to do anything much
(and in fact were close to disintegration), was the Shah of
Iran.  Iran was armed with weapons even the US didn't have
(advanced destroyers the US Navy couldn't get), and tons of
our latest stuff.

4) The Shah began a little empire building of his own, having
a blank check from Uncle Sugar.  He seized some islands from
Iraq, leading eventually to a war that devasted both
countries, but after he was gone, when the US shifted its
friendships and backed Saddam in an attempt to take the
islands back. But that's another story.

5) The Shah, through his CIA-trained and supported Savak
intelligence agency decided to gain control of Afghanistan.
He inspired the king there to support a purge of leftist
organizations, including in the armed forces, in the labor
movement, and among the left political parties.

6) Facing the choice of massacre, exile, or rebellion, the
communists in the military chose the latter, and tossed out
the king, seizing power and establishing a socialist
government.  To say that the Afghan population was not
prepared to support a secular, socialist government, one that
wanted to grant rights to women, co-ed education, land to the
rural poor, and the like, is putting it mildly.  Land owners,
religious parasites, and others resisted.

7) But they had help, from the very beginning.  Zbiginew
Brezinski has pointed out that as head of sweet old Jimmy
Carter's National Security Council, he directed the CIA and
US military to jump in with guns, money, and any other
support they could muster for the mujahideen rebels, long
before the first Soviet soldier set foot in Afghanistan.  It
was the US who backed the mujh, from the very start.

8) The business about "Why did we back the wrong guy?" shows
a remarkable lack of understanding of Afghanistan. The
country is basically tribal. People owe allegiances to family
and tribe.  The US notion of "Why aren't these people
cooperating to form one united resistance?" fails to show any
understanding of the situation at all.  The Pakistani
intelligence service stole huge amounts of money and guns for
themselves, and when they doled out the rest to the mujh, the
leaders there used it to strengthen... themselves, what a
surprise.  Factionalism was rife, as was poor coordination,
competion, saving weapons and supplies to strengthen one
faction against another for the future division of the
spoils, etc.

9) Rather than the Soviets being engaged in empire building,
they were appalled at the Afghan revolution, as they had had
their own experiences on their side of the border after 1917.
When the Afghan communists of the DRA (Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan) decided to establish co-ed education, the
Soviets were horrified. "It took us 20 years to get to that
point" they said. Rather than wanting to seize Afghanistan,
they rejected 14 seperate appeals from the DRA to send
troops, despite the fact that they were fully aware that what
the DRA was facing was an external effort to stoke rebellion,
directed through the Pakistani intelligence service, by the
US and its Saudi and other allies.  The last thing they
wanted was to be in a counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan.
When they finally went in, they sent far too few troops to
pacify the country and seal its borders.  And suffered
accordingly.  As did Afghanistan.

                            **

[Kudos] to Melissa Roddy's article exposing the lies of the
film "Charlie Wilson's War."  It's good to see that the lies
of this film are being answered by people like Roddy who know
better.

Yet even Roddy suffers from the delusion that had the US
supported a different faction (ie., Ahmad Shah Massoud),
things would have turned out differently.

The truth that none dare utter is that the US had no business
supporting any of the various Islamic factions fighting to
overthrow the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan.

While not democratic, the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan
was a secular one that encouraged girls to attend school,
women to remove the veil, and the breakup of the feudalism
that mired Afghanistan in such economic backwardness.

What Charlie Wilson did (as well as Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Ronald Reagan, and a host of others) was to
orchestrate the overthrow of a secular government and replace
it with the most vile rule of religious fundamentalists.
Massoud was no different, and was, until his assassination,
an ardent Islamic fundamentalist.

The tragedy of Afghanistan has only been repeated in Iraq,
where a secular regime has been replaced by medieval
fundamentalist rule.

Dr. Michael Powelson 
Cal State Northridge 
Dept of History