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WSJ: The Real Charlie Wilson
On Saturday from 8-10 p.m. ET, the History Channel will show "The True Story of Charlie Wilson," a documentary featuring some of the real people portrayed by actors in the new movie "Charlie Wilson's War." The gist of both accounts is that Mr. Wilson, a flagrantly hedonistic congressman from Texas, basically won the Cold War by almost single-handedly making sure that Afghan mujahideen got the money and weapons they needed to defeat the Soviet army. There is something offensive about this notion, though Mr. Wilson at least has the grace to point out that the real credit goes to the Afghan people. Repellent in another way is the confident claim -- being revived in the wake of the movie -- that supporting Afghans gave the world Islamic terrorism.So it features the juicy bits. They include Mr. Wilson's formative experience as a boy, when his dog was deliberately killed by a local politician, an act Mr. Wilson avenged by contributing to the politician's electoral defeat. When Mr. Wilson first went to war with the bureaucracy, the official U.S. strategy for Afghanistan was to help the resistance put up only a token fight that no one expected them to win. Yet while Mr. Wilson battled a cynical CIA, he created hurdles of his own. The documentary does give Ronald Reagan -- the only time he is mentioned here -- credit for ordering that Afghans receive the Stinger missiles which turned the tide of the war after 1986. At the end, "The True Story" tries to shoot down criticism that by arming the Afghans, Mr. Wilson gave us the Taliban and al Qaeda. What it doesn't say is that arming the Afghans was not the real mistake anyway -- recruiting and training Arabs was. Many resistance leaders and mujahideen argued passionately against the importation of foreign fighters, whom they neither wanted or needed, and generally loathed. I remember towards the end of the war talking to one muhahideen in particular. He said his fellow Afghans generally disliked the Arabs and called them "cowboys". It was easy to spot the Arabs as they were they only ones to wear the traditional towels on their heads. Good short read. Posted by: Icerigger 2007-12-23 |
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