Charlie Wilson's War

[Tycho]

Tom Hanks, Juilia Roberts - this is just an excellent movie about how the United States became involved in Afghanistan during the 1980's.

It is a true story, told with a dark sense of humor, and some great, young naked girls.

Charlie Wilson was a real Texas Congressman (Democrat) who helped Reagan-Bush navigate their way to toppling the Soviet Union. One such route was through Afghanistan. Wow! What a powerful movie. I'd enjoy watching this again.

It does not take much of a political slant at all, though it shows the hypocrisy of Born-Again Christian Julia Roberts' character who is an unashamed adultress of course.

[2-1B]

CW was a False Democrat.

[Bel-Cam Jos]

I'd heard it was quite movie-ized, but true overall. I liked it, but not enough to have started a thread on it. There's a possibility that the now-closed local airport a few miles down the street from my house was used in a scene!

[stillakid]

I thought it was good. The "message" that makes the movie relevant did arrive at the end, which I thought was a nice touch. Unfortunately the people who need to see this and understand the point never will.

[Tycho]

Stillakid, I'll be blunt about "the message" in the movie:

That we used the Afghans to fight our proxy war against the Soviets and really wound their military funding via their loss of men and equipment. And we helped to stir these Afghans into a religious furor, which went from being against 'the Atheists,' to being against the Christo-Facists (Christians). Jihad went rolling on well past the end zone - namely because we used them and then abandoned them. We didn't give them aid after it was all over - and the movie made the point about all the angry orphans under the age of 14 who grew up wounded and parentless etc. with no healthcare or schools to channel their passions.

Madrassas (Muslem religious school-like camps) filled in that gap and trained these impressionable youth to hate us in order to unify them under guys like Bin Laden who would use them. They had no other hope, so on days like Sept. 11th, they went down with their airplanes.

Now, why can't a Neo-Con at least agree with that? The Neo-Con's answer would be different than the liberal's.

The liberal would say we need to be diplomatic and make a show of good faith and increase our foreign aid and finally make things right with these people. I'd acknowledge the Neo-Con's thought that "they don't deserve it - we got them weapons to get rid of the Soviets, we did our part." -But the movie points out they don't know that. They got the weapons through Pakistan where they were secretly obtained from Israel, who made them look like they were Russian weapons turned against the Soviets the whole time. The movie also made the point that if the Soviets caught Afghans with Made-In-The-USA weapons, it might have started World War III.

Today's Neo-Con would just as soon finally kill the ones the Soviets didn't, and profit off military subcontracts to do that. Oh yeah. That's right. They already are.

But the movie didn't lay down a case for modern policy for 2009 (our next President's). It laid out the facts I'd think neither political school of thought would debate.