Charlie WIlson's War

I do not want to make this a movie review, but I watched the 2007 movie Charlie Wilson's War. It is a true story about the CIA's covert involvement leading to Afghanistan repealing the Soviet Union's long standing war to take over the that country. The defeat ultimately led to collapse of the Soviet Empire. Even though the Soviet Union was our bitter cold war enemy, the Regan Administration had shown little interest in defending a non-Christian nation for fear of upsetting Israel. At some point, a liberal Congressman, Charlie Wilson, from East Texas and known for his immoral behavior became involved in the cause of the Afghanistan people. He was drawn after visiting a refugee camp and hearing horrible stories of the Soviets near genocidal attacks on civilians. Wilson, through his Congressional Committee positions, was able to covertly fund weapon supplies to Afghanistan and we all know the rest of the story. What is not widely known is something I believe significant to our recent history. Following the end of the Soviet/Afghanistan war, Charlie Wilson warned his fellow Congressmen that we needed to fund the rebuilding of Afghanistan or it stood to be taken over by Islamic fundamentalists. Congress turned down this request because they had little interest in assisting a non-Christian country and could care less about Islamic fundamentalists - what a mistake that turned out to be. Afghanistan was left to fend for itself. Because everything was covert, the Afghans believed that America did nothing for them in their fight with the Soviets. Many of the men armed by the CIA went on to become the Taliban's enforcers and Osama bin Laden's protectors.

I am all about keeping our money home, but I have to think we missed the boat on this one. Had we provided more assistance to Afghanistan following the soviet war, we might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Think of the money spent and human lives lost since 9/11 and our war on terror. A little money spent in foreign aid might have saved us that expense. We need to think about this next time we criticize money being allocated for foreign aid.

In the movie, the CIA agent who worked with Wilson told him a parable of the Zen master.

In a village, a boy got a pony, and all the villagers said, “That’s good.” The Zen master said, “We’ll see.” A couple of years later, the boy fell off the pony and broke his leg. All the villagers said, “That’s too bad.” The Zen master said, “We’ll see.” Then a war came and all the other young men went to war, but the boy couldn’t because of his leg. All the villagers said, “That’s good.” The Zen master said, “We’ll see.”

So it is with Afghanistan. As we look back, we see that the victory over the Soviets was not the end of the story.

The movie credits began with this quote:

“These things really happened. We changed the world, then we [blew] the end game.”

Yes we did.