Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The next scene is quite informative.  The camera focuses on a naked Tom Hanks in a bathtub.  Charlie looks exhausted and mumbles something to let his apparently lusty sex partner knew that he is not up to Round 2.

Unfazed, Julia Roberts (essaying an almost nympho type Texas millionaire), is all aglow at her makeup mirror, applying fresh mascara and lipstick.  After all, the night is young, and while she has made good use of one beautiful boudoir, aren't there 13 more?

Both Charlie and the wealthy Texas lady are super patriots and the Russians fighting in Afghanistan are disturbing to them.  The reason is that the Afghanistan fighting effort needs much more government funding.  Wilson manages this as a member of the House Appropriations Committee.  He achieves his master stroke through working with a C.I.A. agent played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

They make it their personal mission to achieve the necessary funding and this is the central thrust in this Superman style film.  Charlie Wilson manages to move Congress to get the vital funding and to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan.

One touching scene shows Julia Roberts in Afghanistan touring with a fundamentalist preacher.  Dramatically she declares her love for Jesus and prompts the evangelist style preacher to preach to the Afghans about how the U.S. will help them drive the Russians out.  Julia Roberts puts a lot of her own money into backing Charlie Wilson's war.

To drive the Russians out of Afghanistan was stated as an idealistic goal to help Afghan victims.  Not once were the valuable oil pipelines running across Afghanistan mentioned as being a prime motive for either the Russians or the U.S.A.

The Mujahadeen, which the Charlie Wilson war sought to "liberate," consisted of the most repressive and fundamentally backward followers of Islam.  

We never learn in "Charlie Wilson's War" of the role played by Osama bin Laden, who served as a battlefield commander and C.I.A. conduit.  Under the Mujahadeen's repressive regime women were not allowed to attend school or join the workplace.

At the present time the weapons systems, modern, high tech, precise, and deadly, are currently killing U.S. service personnel who are trying to overthrow the Taliban, the Islamic extremists who followed the Mujahadeen.  The same high tech weapons systems we provided are now in their hands and being used against the U.S.

During Ronald Reagan's administration the Mujahadeen rebels were supplied with sophisticated stinger missiles, which turned the tide of battle and enabled them to shoot down Russian planes.

The reason provided by the Soviet leadership for supporting the puppet government it installed in Afghanistan was fear of an extremist fundamentalist government being positioned next door.  Were the Soviets wrong?

Oddly enough, it was Reagan who, without sufficient evidence, exercised nervous concern over projected military menaces toward the U.S. posed by Nicaragua and Grenada!  

Recall how many times Reagan and his functionaries told us about how close Nicaragua was to Harlingen, Texas?  Administration functionaries actually discussed the prospect of President Daniel Ortega's Nicaraguan forces attacking the U.S. via Texas!

In reality, what did Charlie Wilson's war accomplish, even if it helped throw the Russians out of Afghanistan?  

A feeble effort at the end of "Charlie Wilson's War" attempts to deal with the current tragic situation in Afghanistan in which American forces face high tech weapons we supplied originally to the Mujahadeen.  Wilson laments that we just did not have a proper "endgame" in place for Afghanistan.

Charlie, you will have to do much better than that.  This is not an endgame problem.  The problem stems from the pact that there never was a solid game plan in effect taking into account foreseeable contingencies such as have occurred if the Russian puppet government was overthrown and extremist regimes such as the Mujahadeen and the Taliban gained control.

When Hollywood gets around to producing "George Bush's Iraq War," wouldn't it be a natural to revive "Charlie Wilson's War" for a box office bonanza double feature?  

Just think, the world premiere could be funded by "the patriotic" Halliburton in Dubai, where the international conglomerate fled to avoid paying tax on the war billion profits they make.  Did the venerable Dick Cheney play a role in the decision to move to Dubai?

"Charlie's Wilson War" does reveal one constructive lesson:  It takes more than booze, broads and anti-Communist good intentions to generate correct and stable U.S. foreign policy in nations riddled in conflict.