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TechnoratiSecond Thoughts on Charlie Wilson's War
I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives -- the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee -- from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents.
Both men flagrantly abused their positions -- but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system -- retire and become a lobbyist -- whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service's first "honored colleague" award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan.
In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James Woolsey, Bill Clinton's first Director of Central Intelligence and one of the agency's least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said: "The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition." One important part of that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent American writers on the subject, is that Wilson's activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States' current status as the most hated nation on Earth.
On May 25, 2003, (the same month George W. Bush stood on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln under a White-House-prepared "Mission Accomplished" banner and proclaimed "major combat operations" at an end in Iraq), I published a review in the Los Angeles Times of the book that provides the data for the film Charlie Wilson's War. The original edition of the book carried the subtitle, "The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History -- the Arming of the Mujahideen." The 2007 paperbound edition was subtitled, "The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times." Neither the claim that the Afghan operations were covert nor that they changed history is precisely true.
In my review of the book, I wrote,
"The Central Intelligence Agency has an almost unblemished record of screwing up every 'secret' armed intervention it ever undertook. From the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953 through the rape of Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the 'secret war' in Laos, aid to the Greek Colonels who seized power in 1967, the 1973 killing of President Allende in Chile, and Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra war against Nicaragua, there is not a single instance in which the Agency's activities did not prove acutely embarrassing to the United States and devastating to the people being 'liberated.' The CIA continues to get away with this bungling primarily because its budget and operations have always been secret and Congress is normally too indifferent to its Constitutional functions to rein in a rogue bureaucracy. Therefore the tale of a purported CIA success story should be of some interest.
"According to the author of Charlie Wilson's War, the exception to CIA incompetence was the arming between 1979 and 1988 of thousands of Afghan mujahideen ("freedom fighters"). The Agency flooded Afghanistan with an incredible array of extremely dangerous weapons and 'unapologetically mov[ed] to equip and train cadres of high tech holy warriors in the art of waging a war of urban terror against a modern superpower [in this case, the USSR].'
"The author of this glowing account, [the late] George Crile, was a veteran producer for the CBS television news show '60 Minutes' and an exuberant Tom Clancy-type enthusiast for the Afghan caper. He argues that the U.S.'s clandestine involvement in Afghanistan was 'the largest and most successful CIA operation in history,' 'the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time,' and that 'there was nothing so romantic and exciting as this war against the Evil Empire.' Crile's sole measure of success is killed Soviet soldiers (about 15,000), which undermined Soviet morale and contributed to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the period 1989 to 1991. That's the successful part.
"However, he never once mentions that the 'tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are the same people who in 1996 killed nineteen American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew a hole in the side of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on September 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon."
Where Did the "Freedom Fighters" Go?
When I wrote those words I did not know (and could not have imagined) that the actor Tom Hanks had already purchased the rights to the book to make into a film in which he would star as Charlie Wilson, with Julia Roberts as his right-wing Texas girlfriend Joanne Herring, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gust Avrakotos, the thuggish CIA operative who helped pull off this caper.
What to make of the film (which I found rather boring and old-fashioned)? It makes the U.S. government look like it is populated by a bunch of whoring, drunken sleazebags, so in that sense it's accurate enough. But there are a number of things both the book and the film are suppressing. As I noted in 2003,
"For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must sign off on -- that is, authorize -- a document called a 'finding.' Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director [today Secretary of Defense] Robert Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic mujahideen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The mujahideen did the job but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be all that grateful to the United States."
In the bound galleys of Crile's book, which his publisher sent to reviewers before publication, there was no mention of any qualifications to his portrait of Wilson as a hero and a patriot. Only in an "epilogue" added to the printed book did Crile quote Wilson as saying, "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And the people who deserved the credit are the ones who made the sacrifice. And then we fucked up the endgame." That's it. Full stop. Director Mike Nichols, too, ends his movie with Wilson's final sentence emblazoned across the screen. And then the credits roll.
Neither a reader of Crile, nor a viewer of the film based on his book would know that, in talking about the Afghan freedom fighters of the 1980s, we are also talking about the militants of al Qaeda and the Taliban of the 1990s and 2000s. Amid all the hoopla about Wilson's going out of channels to engineer secret appropriations of millions of dollars to the guerrillas, the reader or viewer would never suspect that, when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, President George H.W. Bush promptly lost interest in the place and simply walked away, leaving it to descend into one of the most horrific civil wars of modern times.
Among those supporting the Afghans (in addition to the U.S.) was the rich, pious Saudi Arabian economist and civil engineer, Osama bin Laden, whom we helped by building up his al Qaeda base at Khost. When bin Laden and his colleagues decided to get even with us for having been used, he had the support of much of the Islamic world. This disaster was brought about by Wilson's and the CIA's incompetence as well as their subversion of all the normal channels of political oversight and democratic accountability within the U.S. government. Charlie Wilson's war thus turned out to have been just another bloody skirmish in the expansion and consolidation of the American empire -- and an imperial presidency. The victors were the military-industrial complex and our massive standing armies. The billion dollars' worth of weapons Wilson secretly supplied to the guerrillas ended up being turned on ourselves.
An Imperialist Comedy
Which brings us back to the movie and its reception here. (It has been banned in Afghanistan.) One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists. They start believing that they are the bearers of civilization, the bringers of light to "primitives" and "savages" (largely so identified because of their resistance to being "liberated" by us), the carriers of science and modernity to backward peoples, beacons and guides for citizens of the "underdeveloped world."
Such attitudes are normally accompanied by a racist ideology that proclaims the intrinsic superiority and right to rule of "white" Caucasians. Innumerable European colonialists saw the hand of God in Darwin's discovery of evolution, so long as it was understood that He had programmed the outcome of evolution in favor of late Victorian Englishmen. (For an excellent short book on this subject, check out Sven Lindquist's "Exterminate All the Brutes.")
When imperialist activities produce unmentionable outcomes, such as those well known to anyone paying attention to Afghanistan since about 1990, then ideological thinking kicks in. The horror story is suppressed, or reinterpreted as something benign or ridiculous (a "comedy"), or simply curtailed before the denouement becomes obvious. Thus, for example, Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team, notes that the film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."
Similarly, we are told by another insider reviewer, James Rocchi, that the scenario, as originally written by Aaron Sorkin of "West Wing" fame, included the following line for Avrakotos: "Remember I said this: There's going to be a day when we're gonna look back and say 'I'd give anything if [Afghanistan] were overrun with Godless communists'." This line is nowhere to be found in the final film.
Today there is ample evidence that, when it comes to the freedom of women, education levels, governmental services, relations among different ethnic groups, and quality of life -- all were infinitely better under the Afghan communists than under the Taliban or the present government of President Hamid Karzai, which evidently controls little beyond the country's capital, Kabul. But Americans don't want to know that -- and certainly they get no indication of it from Charlie Wilson's War, either the book or the film.
The tendency of imperialism to rot the brains of imperialists is particularly on display in the recent spate of articles and reviews in mainstream American newspapers about the film. For reasons not entirely clear, an overwhelming majority of reviewers concluded that Charlie Wilson's War is a "feel-good comedy" (Lou Lumenick in the New York Post), a "high-living, hard-partying jihad" (A.O. Scott in the New York Times), "a sharp-edged, wickedly funny comedy" (Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times). Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post wrote of "Mike Nichols's laff-a-minute chronicle of the congressman's crusade to ram funding through the House Appropriations Committee to supply arms to the Afghan mujahideen"; while, in a piece entitled "Sex! Drugs! (and Maybe a Little War)," Richard L. Berke in the New York Times offered this stamp of approval: "You can make a movie that is relevant and intelligent -- and palatable to a mass audience -- if its political pills are sugar-coated."
When I saw the film, there was only a guffaw or two from the audience over the raunchy sex and sexism of "good-time Charlie," but certainly no laff-a-minute. The root of this approach to the film probably lies with Tom Hanks himself, who, according to Berke, called it "a serious comedy." A few reviews qualified their endorsement of Charlie Wilson's War, but still came down on the side of good old American fun. Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail, for instance, thought that it was "best to enjoy Charlie Wilson's War as a thoroughly engaging comedy. Just don't think about it too much or you may choke on your popcorn." Peter Rainer noted in the Christian Science Monitor that the "Comedic Charlie Wilson's War has a tragic punch line." These reviewers were thundering along with the herd while still trying to maintain a bit of self-respect.
The handful of truly critical reviews have come mostly from blogs and little-known Hollywood fanzines -- with one major exception, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times. In an essay subtitled "'Charlie Wilson's War' celebrates events that came back to haunt Americans," Turan called the film "an unintentionally sobering narrative of American shouldn't-have" and added that it was "glib rather than witty, one of those films that comes off as being more pleased with itself than it has a right to be."
My own view is that if Charlie Wilson's War is a comedy, it's the kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is James Rocchi's summing-up for Cinematical: "Charlie Wilson's War isn't just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia."
Chalmers Johnson is the author of the Blowback Trilogy -- Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (paperbound edition, January 2008).
Copyright 2008 Chalmers Johnson
76 Comments so far
Show AllThat is to say it is art, not propaganda, imo. Like THE GOLDEN COMPASS is art, not propaganda. We can discuss it, but calling it propaganda kills the discussion, imo.
and @JConrad: I think they did mention pipelines and oil. Wasn't it in one of the interviews Dan Rather did in the video footage? Did I dream that part up?
I think they did a pretty good job of showing how there are real issues (people suffering) and real greed is happening (ooh, look! our oil supply is at risk!) but it gets boiled down to "killing Russians" and "shooting down helicopters" by self-serving congressmen and clandestine forces agents.
With wide and long term and "unforeseen" consequences.
I saw the movie a couple time. I work in a theater. I told several people they should watch the film "because we're living in the sequel right now."
I think the more artistic films leave the audience to figure things out. I interpreted the film differently than the Johnson. It also inspired me to search out more information after seeing it. I know lots of people who talked about the film and will probably look up more info about that slice of history.
It is art. If anything, it is propaganda in favor of staying the heck out of people's lives with military support if you aren't willing to follow up with the *real* support of funding social needs.
It was also very obvious to this viewer that what Wilson had done pained him greatly. This is a critical, if subtle message the film delivers.
http://www.trafford.com/07-2440
Dear Sirs and Mesdames,
This subject, in my mind, is the most immediate most urgent and serious matter confronting the Human Race. Despite the fact that many great minds, philosophers, politicians, academics and economists, have all created eminent careers based on their knowledge and understanding of how free enterprise, national economies and the human race interact, they have all failed to admit the obvious. It is glaringly obvious that we have large swathes of the human race that do not have access to money; it is that simple.
Therefore we need a system of economy that literally accommodates the needs and aspirations of every human being. A system that will not rely on taxing others' in order to provide all the multifarious forms of infrastructures, as well as our human and social obligations. A system of taxation in which the haves are continually being pressured to claw back those taxes from the have-nots. We must face the fact, once and for all; this system can never provide all human needs and infrastructures.
We have allowed right-wing ideology to dictate the terms and even if or when large swathes of populations may be fed and housed or have health needs addressed. We tolerate the fact that we have millions of working poor who will never earn enough to meet all of life's basic costs. Many of these are struggling to raise families the bedrock of our future. Those who work lead the most precarious of lives.
Precarious, because their work and income has become the plaything of corporate power, which moves production to lower waged economies. This makes the executives and the shareholders richer but at the cost of the misery they leave behind. Wages go down, but not prices, or costs of living, and the formerly free "social wage entitlements" are removed.
This is the "rationalized" world directed by Corporate Power and implemented by our Governments, the world of "user pays".
Take it or suffer the consequences. The Government calls this "work choices". Hear the Corporate applause? The consequences are total destitution for some; they could buy none of life's essential services.
Complete and total destitution for many unless they work, no shelter, no food, no health care, and no education, none of life's necessities.
So we need a system, which provides equal opportunity and care for all, overlaid with free enterprise. At the same time we can put in place a fair and equitable industrial relations system that eliminates employer employee antagonisms.
Our democracy is in serious trouble. Rich people and corporations channel funds into political parties in order to achieve their own commercial or ideological ends cleverly bypassing democratic inputs. It is happening in all democracies but that does not make it "worlds best practice" or "right". We can correct that quite easily. We make so-called free trade agreements under which corporations are exempted from government regulation that control workers rights, pay and working conditions. Is this democracy, is this really necessary, should corporations have such unbridled power, where will it end?
Introduction of The Universal Economy will immediately and substantially impact and improve such questions as Poverty, provision of universal education, health care, pensions, unemployment, housing and all public infrastructure (roads bridges schools hospitals etc). None of this will require the imposition of taxation.
The concept of The Universal Economy will be easy to introduce, because it benefits everyone, everyone will want it to work. It will be hardest to implement in third world nations, not impossible, just slower to implement. It will kick start economies wherever it is introduced.
This is a concept for the twenty-first century. Put to one side traditional thought processes and embedded conventions see only the greater-good and benefit of mankind then you will support this enterprise with the open heart and mind it deserves. Adopt this concept for the good of humanity.
Give your support, not money.
Yours Faithfully, THOMAS W ADAMS.
Parting shot:
I commented previously before seeing the movie.
It was worse than I expected and little more than pseudo-clever and slightly sexy Hollywood fluff that becomes propaganda through intent or incompetence or a lack of integrity and honesty by Mr. Hanks (who I assume must keep his investments in mind)!
By the end of the movie, one is left with the general impression that we rescued the Afghans from the evil Russians, yet failed to follow through with "nation building", although that topic gets about 60 seconds of attention.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE WORD ABOUT OIL AND GAS PIPELINES THAT WILL ALLOW AMERICAN OIL CORPORATIONS TO EXPORT CENTRAL ASIA RESERVES TO GLOBAL MARKETS SUCH AS INDIA AND JAPAN AND CHINA AND OTHER CUSTOMERS.
Our follow-through (after the film ends) was to covertly back the Taliban until such time that they refused to play ball with UNOCAL.
And then, our way of thanking Afghanistan for defeating our old enemy, Russia, was to hit one of the poorest nations on earth with 55,000 bombing runs including plenty of depleted uranium. The new nation building occupation plan is to carpet Afghan farms and water resources with Roundup Ultra !
God Bless American and Support the Troops !
Thanks, TimeToMove... it is a bit disingenuous to make the leap directly from Charlie Wilson to 9-11. A lot of things happened between the two events. It was part of the "containment" policy and that appeared to be working at the time. Hindsight is 20-20.
Wow. Blaming Charlie Wilson for 9/11.
Opportunism is the nature of politics and there is no such as as "long-term" anything.
Seize the day, the money, the spotlight then retire and become a lobbyist.
It was lack of integrity of the government as whole and neglect that created the blowback. We all know we do our thiing then pack up and leave. Read Kinzer's book Overthrow. We have been doing this for 100 years.
We packed up and left. This is what happened. Wilson was just part of this overall pattern. I do not blame him for 9/11. This is ridiculous.
wow, this is an unbelievably skewed reading of the film, and i can't believe there hasn't been anybody to actually defend the film. that was the WHOLE FUCKIN POINT - that this well-intentioned congressman and the arming of the mujahideen paved the way for 9-11 and the quagmires of iraq and afghanistan. if you think the film is celebrating charlie wilson, then you need to watch the film again. the original book may have celebrated the man (i dont know, havent read it), and had this film been released pre-911, then maybe you could interpret it as gung-ho celebration of american imperialism and victory over the "godless communists", but aaron sorkin (an unabashed liberal, if you've ever seen the west wing) is counting on the fact that you know the intervening history.
i believe the intention of the film was to give you an entertaining version of this moment in failed american foreign policy - one that must be remembered when considering why efforts to restore peace in afghanistan and iraq are failing. the casting of tom hanks and julia roberts is to attract viewers that wouldn't normally spend their friday night reviewing the history of misguided american intervention overseas. the film is irresponsible in its retelling of cold war history, no doubt, but it gets the important stuff right - we've been fucking up in the middle east for a long time.
Mr. Johnson,
Thanks for this excellent analysis. Should be read by all.
Your trilogy of books on the American Empire are must reading.
Hamster,
No one wants to grow up, but unfortunately you have to. Good luck with it. Why would you assume that I have any respect for Bush or Cheney based on what I wrote? Obviously you're so blinded by that anti-US rage that you can't really see that I dared to criticize the fools who spend all their time posting on these stories. YES, it's good to teach a child to check facts and to make informed decisions, particularly when it involves voting when they are older. But to teach a child that calling Bush - or any adult - an a**h*le or what have you, is inappropriate, irresponsible, and simply bad parenting. The type of vitriole spewed by the commenters on this site is the same stuff I hear from parents in front of their children.
Children don't understand the issues at stake, and they don't understand when it's appropriate to criticize another person or how to do it appropriately. They don't understand that when you say stuff like that in front of another child, who has service member overseas for a parent or sibling or otherwise, then you start to hurt other people. Short of that, you start an unproductive argument based on a lot of crappy, ill-informed spin, because that's all a child is going to bring to the table.
It's also counterproductive, and bad parenting, to teach a child that there is no hope or truth in the world because of this brief period in US history, and because they might disassociate themselves from their family or society when they get a little older. If you don't have hope, you don't have anything. Certainly, the president and vp ought to be held accountable for their crimes. Does a child understand that? Not really.
And Mr. Chersonsky,
As you might have guessed from above, I am, in fact, quite liberal - so by all means try not to feel so threatened.
But boy you are full of yourself with all your reading. You know, they teach monkeys to read. But the monkeys don't actually understand much of what they're reading.
Just because someone writes a book and does not get sued for libel, it does not mean the book is true. Same goes for film. You're typing away up there with all of your "facts" and the mini-resume to back up your inside knowledge of all these events... well what makes you think that makes any more credible than any of the other cranks on this site? What makes you think I would even bother to believe you about your military service record?
Why should I bother believing you, when the first person who commented on the story above said the "collapse of WTC 1 2" was "comedy"?
No, my criticism is aimed at you and others, the typical commenters on this site. I'm not criticizing the possibility that the film is accurate. I'm criticizing the fact that everyone on this site seems to believe EVERYTHING THEY READ HERE. It's a display of the same level of extreme hubris - on the other side of the spectrum - as the Bushies and Republicans do with their "victory" mentality. The war is not a football game, but you wouldn't know it from listening or reading what those folks have to say.
Feel free to try to pigeonhole me as a capitalist conservative, whatever the hell that might mean in Spain. I don't have any control over whether the US operates as a capitalist economy. I'd go hungry. I'm just trying to get by and be a positive influence on young people and the general public within my reach, because THAT is what matters. Not these ridiculous echo chambers of extreme anti-US leftism. There is no upside to extremism, and this site is full of extremists.
If you personally have the power to bring Charlie Wilson up on charges for violating the law in terms of illegally funding a war in Afghanistan, then I'd listen to what you have to say about that part of our unfortunate, short-sighted history in the US.
Otherwise, build all the conspiracy theories you want and base those on your analysis of all those other people's books (which are, of course, written by people who read other people's books as research).
I plan to see the film.
From "Ski" in Spain.....
Dear Googly Moogly.....
You are a typical "Capitalist Conservative"...."Let´s get on the bandwagon and support our "Neo-Conservative" leaders even if it means killing thousands of people in the attacks of 9/11 and the "Invasions" of Iraq and Afghanistan.
I served in the U.S Air Force 1963-1967(Two of my friends who went to Viet Nam died of cancers contracted from contact with "Agent Orange").....I graduated with a BA in Political Science and wound up teaching in a grade school in a low income neighborhood in Illinois for 31 years. I have beeen retired for six years and have had time to read "Books". Yes, I have read books with facts and if they were libelous, they would not have been printed.
Fact: Jimmy Carter received the advice of his main adviser, Zbigniew B., "It would be best to prevent an educational and economic Soviet success in Afghanistan. If the Soviets are successful then that model could travel down to Iran." There was no Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan when the decision to invest 500 million dollars was made to form a "Counter Revolution"....
But wait googly. In 1981 William Cayce of CIA negotiated with the Pakistani ISI, Pakistan´s version of the CIA, to recruit 100,000 Islamic Militants from 43 different Muslim countries to fight an "Islamic Jihad".....Guess what. They were being trained in the United States and Pakistan by CIA and British MI6 personnel in bomb making.....Guess who helped finance the operation! You guessed it, Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden (He was bringing in 20 to 25 million dollars per month from other Arab sources.), and the United States. So there were billions of dollars and lots of equipment funneled to Al Qaeda, "The Base".(Remember Donald Rumsfeld said in 2002, We can not account for over 2 trillion dollars worth of equipment." and then the GAO reported in 2003 that the Department of Defense could not account for another trillion dollars worth of equipment.)
What happened after 1989 and the Soviet withdrawal? The plan continued. Yes, an oil pipeline was to be built from the Caspian Sea and the United States wanted to control that project....So, they supported another group, the Taliban, "The Students", and Osama Bin Laden was allowed to go back to Afghanistan to help them gain power.....Unfortunately, The Taliban decided to give the Oil Pipeline Project to Bridas Oil of Argentina in 1997....Unocal cried "Foul" to the United States Congress and that was when the Neo Conservatives wrote their revised "Pax Americana" and tried to get Clinton and Gore to support their invasion intentions. (Oh, don´t forget that Karzai, an ex director in Unocal, was made Prime Minister of Afghanistan.)
Benazir Bhutto had warned the United States that it was creating a Frankenstein with Osama Bin Laden. (Oh, and she had an interview with David Frost and claimed that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.) No wonder the United States did not get upset with Musharraf and the assassination. And, bringing in the British to investigate the assasination is another touch since Princess Diana was madly in love with a Pakistani Surgeon and had predicted her death in a car accident.....Of course the Media doesn´t mention any of that stuff....
In 1974, The United States signed a secret agreement with Saudi Arabia....The United States would preserve and protect the Saud Family Reign in exchange for guarantees of oil and oil prices.....The Saudis are Sunnis, the Sunnis are the insurgents in Iraq that have allegedly killed more Americans and the Sunnis are linked to Al Qaeda.
14 of the alleged terrorists of 9/11 came from, you guessed it, Saudi Arabia. World Trade Center #7 was an obvious pre-planned demolition and thus the rest of the activities of 9/11 have to be questioned. Yet, googly, George W just promised the Saudis more sophisticated weapons and they are the natural enemy of Israel and Iran.....Oh, googly, that Naval Incident near Iran was all a lie just like the Gulf of Tonkin and making Iran the "Enemy" of the Arab World is bizarre beyond belief.....Israel has two hundred nuclear weapons and has the same policy as George W. "Attack first and ask questions later."
Googly, pick up "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. Then, read Naomi Klein´s "Shock Doctrine" and Daniel Estulin´s, "La Verdadera Historia Del Club Bilderberg." And if you can read those, then try Von Bulow´s, "La CIA y 11 de Septiembre"......There are lots more but then, Let´s all work together and get control of the world´s oil supply for Mobil Exxon et al even if it means occupying Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran for the next 100 years.
Googly Moogly, If growing up means respecting the likes of Bush, I don't ever want to grow up. You don't teach kids to respect others by blindly respecting "elders", or anyone else, who don't deserve it. Kids're smart enough to learn about values, not just blind obedience. That doesn't teach them right from wrong or how to think for themselves.
Solutions 2, excellent point about the US and USSR being flip sides of the same Dominator mentality.
About the film, I disagree that Hanks portrayed a "hero". Especially if you read the book, he is portrayed as a deeply flawed person. It's more a detailed account of the convoluted and absurd games of power and personality and corruption that rule politics in DC. Read about how Wilson pulled strings and got away with a drunk hit and run. This really happened.
It's amusing and the movie is a hoot. Many critics complain that the point wasn't explicitly made that the Mujahideen soon became terrorists and turned against the U.S. But that point was made at the end, all the critics caught it, and you can bet the viewing public figured it out as well. Most of the critics seem to assume their audience is very shallow. Just because the movie was entertaining doesn't mean it doesn't make its point.
I also dislike the "victory" culture that is our hubris here in the U.S. and the film seems to be an example of that. But it's only a film.
However I think people like patrickballotintegrity and other commenters above are quite full of themselves, and crap to boot.
People that comment on Common Dreams seem to love to accept whatever a lefty writes as gospel. They like to pick on the awful things the CIA has supposedly done, and really they know nothing for sure about what the CIA has done. None of us do. The CIA doesn't pat itself on the back in public, so you don't know the sacrifices people make to do their jobs so that you can remain there at your computer typing vitriolic nonsense. Nobody FORCED the people of al qaida to become terrorists or to murder innocent people in the U.S. on Sept. 11. They chose to do it, despite the peaceful teachings of true Islam.
Sept. 11 isn't only the responsibility of U.S. foriegn policy, and Americans didn't create the concept of Machiavellian greed, either. It arrived with our ancestors from Europe and the Mideast.
Yeah yeah yeah, feel free to go on and on about all the awful things the U.S. has done. Fine. What you're doing here, typing while taking breaks from online pornography, isn't solving the problems that led the U.S. or your own country down their current paths. What you're doing here isn't solving anything. Shut up and get busy taking part in a positive way. There's really nothing about the big picture that you can change by doing this. You CAN help a child learn to read or use a computer. You CAN clean up litter in your neighborhood. You CAN mentor a youth who has no positive role model at home.
Instead, you waste people's time at work or elsewhere, spouting spin that isn't even your own original thought. Stop the echo chamber.
Is screaming for impeachment in front of a child going to teach the child to respect his elders? No, it is not. I see adults cuss and swear about the president constantly, and they wonder why their kids have no respect for them.
Let's grow up. Now.
I once read a story about textbooks being supplied to the "freedom fighters" to use in the Madrassas. I guess 40% of the textbook contained violent images or arguments.
Does anyone have any copies of these textbooks or know who wrote that story a few years ago? The textbooks would highlight how American along with Saudi, Pakistani, British, etc...) policies fostered and grew the problem we are now dealing with.
If we have that type of information, then we can see militarism as a problem instead of as a solution.
First, we should stop teaching foreign children how to be violent.
I posted the following review of Charlie Wilson's war on the blog www.realwealtheconomy.com
http://www.realwealtheconomy.com/?p=45
I was shocked to see American's thinking this was a good thing/a funny thing. Johnson is right....I'm amazed Tom Hanks doesn't realize what a fool he's made of himself by playing this part as if he's a hero!
If you go to watch this film, watch it from the perspective of a world that operates under a Dominator system instead of a Caring system. Wilson's interest in the Afghan people and their plight under the Soviet invasion plays a motivation that starts him down the path that ultimately becomes a $1 BILLION investment in arms to empower the Afghans to fight back. It is one Dominator system (US) fighting another Dominator system (USSR). Many cheer that this results in the demise of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In truth, it didn't change anything at all. Because the Dominator value system lives on.
The best line in the entire movie is the last line and quote by Mr. Wilson: "We f—-ked up the end game." Mr. Wilson could not stir up even a pittance of $1 million dollars to help in rebuilding Afghanistan with schools, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure for creating a society that works. As he pleads with those who have the power in the Congressional budget to divert monies for rebuilding Afghanistan, they laugh at him and say that no one is interested in the Afghan people–Americans were only interested in bringing down the Soviets. This is the Dominator Value system at work–laughing and dismissing the Caring Value system. But because of this, just 10 years later, those $ billions in arms turn into the quagmire we're in today. The Taliban and Osama Bin Laden arose to play their part in the Dominator story–and on and on it goes.
More wars will never solve the dilemma we're in today. Only by recognizing the Dominator value system–and how it influences the way we run this world–can we begin to see its failings–for the US, Russia, the Middle East–everyone. Its our responsibility to recognize and begin to change. Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) and his building of schools in Pakistan does more to change the world because it is an example of caring for humans and encourages them to grow up and care for others.
Charlie Wilson's War just perpetuated the same old story. The Soviet Union may have broken apart as a result of it, but the Dominator story did not. If we really want to change the world–all of us need to work together to creating a Caring Value system and an economic system that supports the greatest work of all–caring for humans and the planet.
Liberator writes:
"You may not be conscious of the fact that Western Europe was under equal occupation, and still is. Pop Quiz: How many US troops are stationed in the various bases in Western Europe? You simply don't realize that it's occupation, because the western system is more palatable to you. The Post-War Blocks - Western and Eastern - were a direct result of the War, with each country having their own puppet governments which nevertheless had to heed the will of their respective Masters."
You sound opposed to US troops in Europe. I don't know if you were ever one stationed there or ever lived on a base there, but I have, as a military dependent (Army) and I can say that it certainly did not bear any resemblance to occupation as I imagine it. The presence there of our forces, which is on the wane anyway, is a point I often find myself in disagreement with when talking to fellow sympathetic ideologues. I actually feel that the continued existence of American military bases in Europe is mostly a good thing for the simple reason that it enables allot of Americans, especially those of backgrounds who would be unlikely to actually do so, to experience life in another country; to, in fact, see that there are other ways of being.
Yes, many of them never leave the base f they don't have during their deployments; many spend 18-36 straight months wishing they were back in the USA; but many actually do get out and take advantage of being somewhere different, and it often changes them. For allot of them, it brings the first genuine realisation that there is more to the world than the United States; that there are other things to eat besides burgers and fries; that, in fact, a 231 year old country isn't really that old compared to some.
I maintain that it was my own time spent in Germany, in the 1980s, while my father was stationed there, that did no small part in leading me to develop a more global view of the world, a perspective that encouraged me to at least try and examine the actions of the US within the context of a single planet. As odd as it may sound, having US forces in Europe so long after WWII helped me to find my liberal identity.
As for the answer to your quiz: I don't know exactly, but last I checked, there were roughly 88,000 US troops stationed in Europe; add another 1750-2000, I think, for Bosnia and Kosovo.
Poet writes:
"As a kid growing up in the 1950's with a shortwave radio i used to listen to the various Communist radio broadcasts from the USSR and Eastern Europe who regularly referred to my country as "US imperialists" serene in the knowledge that it wasn't so and who were they to talk while all of Eastern Europe was occupied."
You may not be conscious of the fact that Western Europe was under equal occupation, and still is. Pop Quiz: How many US troops are stationed in the various bases in Western Europe? You simply don't realize that it's occupation, because the western system is more palatable to you. The Post-War Blocks - Western and Eastern - were a direct result of the War, with each country having their own puppet governments which nevertheless had to heed the will of their respective Masters.
What's all this talk about Afghanistan under the Soviets vs. Afghanistan now? What some of you seem to miss is that the US incited civil war in Afghanistan MONTHS BEFORE the USSR sent in troops. The US under President Carter started the bloody conflict which deposed the secular government of Afghanistan in favor of the Mujahedeen/Al-Quaida/Taliban. It was the US who stirred up trouble first in order to lure the USSR into a Vietnam-like situation. And yes, it was the Communist Government of Afghanistan which asked for troops from the USSR in order to help them against the Warlords who wanted to overthrow them, and at first the USSR denied them this request. So, while it became a occupation, it wasn't so from the outset.
Charlie Wilson's War: just more American Propaganda aimed at making the suckers believe that the USA (USA! USA! USA!) is the best thing since sliced white bread, when in reality the USA should start calling itself the 4th Reich....
1. Got any cartoonists out there? Here's a freebe:
Scene: cold block room w/single light bulb. CIA "interegation" room. An Arab being waterboarded. The agent pouring the water says, "OK, Abdul, I'm gonna ask you one more time—Who set up 9/11?". Abdul: "blubDickblubblub blubCheneyblubblub". Second agent with a clip board, to a third agent with the video camera: "Eh, that's what they all say the first few times…".
The little mouse in the corner says, "Must be a conspiracy"….
If you can draw it ,you can have it.
Cheers
There is a very dark and sad, but plausible case to be made that the torturing is not to make the war less dangereous or shorter for our troops, but to ferret out and neutralize anyone who has first hand knowledge of who the perps are and how the whole thing unfolded. It may also be plausible that OBL is still free because he has arranged one of those " if anything happens to me …" letters like in the better spy v. spy movies. Can anyone come up with a way to connect the dots that is less painful to patriotic sensibilities? I hope so, because these thoughts are hard to bear.
Basic question: What would various perps do if they had the means and motive after pulling off 9/11? There are plenty of detectives, criminologists and psychologists out there who could speak to this conjecture. Let's hear from some.
peace
Mr. Johnson, your books and articles have given us what little chance we may still have to preserve the Constitution and our nation of people. Thank you. Am I off the deep end on the above?
Chalmers Johnson's article comes from the same place his Blowback books come from, that American foreign policy since World War II is reactionary, self-centered, and without thought for the people who have to suffer through American manipulations. American foreign policy never sees beyond the here and now and gives no thought to what will happen once the deed is done. Eisenhower blesses the overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953 because he fears Iran trading with the Soviets, and Jimmy Carter has to deal with the aftermath of a young, vibrant, and very pissed off generation of Iranians who finally have had enough of the Shah, assuredly as heinous a tyrant as any other dictator we propped up, including Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet. There is no pregressive thinking in our foreign policy, and absolutely no thought to the mass of common people who have to deal with American narcissistic manipulations. We can talk all we want about communism-this and terrorist-that, but the point of the matter is, unless there is a drastic change in how we go about setting foreign policy, there will be another 9/11. If we keep giving what we're giving, we'll keep getting what we're getting. George Washington warned us about the entanglement of foreign alliances, and I think it was James Madison who spoke out about chasing dragons around the world. If we don't listen to Johnson, surely Washington and Madison deserve our ears.
email Jimmy Carter at carterweb@emory.edu or phone 404 420 5100 or 800 550 3560 about his having the CIA arm, train and fund the fundamentalist hill tribes against the socialist women liberating government in Kabul to alarm and sucker in the Soviet Union to enter Afghanistan six months later. Make it polite and friendly. Could he please identify the corporate pressures on him to secretly order a covert attack on a friendly government.
I will as well, Jay Janson
Suggest that if many of us send the same request to Jimmy Carter as the above, his web site might have Carter make some answer other than the expected form letter this writer received. Lets just do it! This is really a great opportunity for us to broadcast this US first use of Islamic terror easily, its already all over the Internet.
Dear Friend of The Carter Center,
Your email has been forwarded to the appropriate staff member for
consideration.
Because of the large volume of email we receive daily, we are not able to
respond individually to comments. However, please know that we will
consider your views and requests.
We invite you to visit www.cartercenter.org regularly for updates about
our ongoing efforts to advance peace and health worldwide.
Sincerely,
Web Site Administrator
Dear President Carter,
Heaven knows how much the world appreciates your efforts for peace.
But 26 pages come up on Google upon punching in "Brzezinski brags" -
how he brought down the USSR by alarming it with the arming, funding
and training of the fundamentalist hill tribes against the socialist
leaning Kabul government, thus suckering it into entering into
Afghanistan.
Can you help us put into perspective the fundamentalist phenomenon
used as a cold war tool so we may stop unnecessary bloodshed fostered
by ignorance and blind hatred.
http://www.countercurrents.org/janson120607.htm
Confessions: Cindy re Casey,
Bill Moyer re Vietnam,
Jimmy Carter re Funding Terrorism
By Jay Janson
12 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
One can't help often noticing that certain of our celebrities with a
fine reputation for being helpful to the peace movement have dark
secrets of personal anguish in their past, which upon candid
revelation would help people understand events purposely distorted by
corporate media and thus contributive to political education and
consciousness raising amid a public so grossly misled by the war
propaganda through news selection that purposely disinforms.
FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER
Jimmy Carter enjoys prestige and respect for his work as a dedicated
promoter of peaceful solutions. What a enormous contribution to peace
Carter could make by enlightening us on the process of covert
murderous intention during his presidency. If he would just 'fess up'
about his now no longer secret orders funding, training and equipping
the fundamentalist tribes of the mountains against the socialist
(women liberating) government in Kabul, a full six months BEFORE the
first units of the Soviet army entered Afghanistan. One would imagine
that Carter himself would see the great value of an honest admission
and welcome an opportunity to unburden himself of whatever feelings
of anguish and self-recrimination he might be experiencing.
It was Carter's advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who bragged to French
news magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, in Paris, 15 January 1998, of
suckering in the Russians, by frightening them into believing the
U.S. was threatening to create a hostile Muslim nation on its
doorstep amid the Soviet Muslin republics, by our pouring in money to
arm and train fundamentalists, fundamentalist tribes who would later
receive much more, openly, from successive U.S. administrations, and
which would include the funding, along with Saudi help, of tens of
thousands of extreme Wahhabi sect madrasahs, schools that would
eventually produce the Taliban, who along with Osama bin-Ladin, would
eventually also receive U.S. aid.
"Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in
his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services
began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet
intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser
to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is
that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA
aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the
Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality,
secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was
July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for
secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And
that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained
to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet
military intervention."
Peace loving Jimmy, please tell us candidly of the times when you
weren't for peace and the mitigating circumstances thereof. Help us
understand that the roots of today's genocidal belligerencies go way
back to a history of nefarious foreign policy.
Appreciatively in advance and in highest respect for your recent book
on Palestine,
jay janson
Avrakotos line omited from the film: "Remember I said this: There's going to be a day when we're gonna look back and say 'I'd give anything if [they] were overrun with Godless communists'.
AdeleTheCzech: 'I find it confusing that anyone as "in the know" as Johnson would put such a rosy glow on Communist rule, now that so many of the KGB archives have been opened'.
Precisely 'in the know' are the researchers that studied and sometimes participated in the Big Corporate 'morally unambiguous crusade' of destroying Communist rule and remember us (too late?) the consequences of this 'glorious' intervention (Chomsky,Johnson, Parenti, Petras etc). These consecuences were/are:
-For many countries the wild return in two steps -and cases in only one- from communist states to welfare states inheredited from the Enlightment and then suddenly to primitive feudal peaseantlike substates subject to disguised forms of abject slavery toward feudal lords (corporations) and with pretentions of autonomy. For non communist countries this last devolutionary step has/have been the norm after the soviet collapse.
-The imposition worldwide of 'fox-hen rules as how hens must acquiesce when being eated by foxes' and sold as 'free trade agreements'. This caused and cause more victims that all the soviet, chinese and related 'purges' of the twenty century. At full violence after the fall of the Soviet Union.
-The surrounder to a Unique Giant Media Control of Information that permited/permit unjustified interventions, massacres and genocide to be buried from view in all subsequent imperial 'wars': Panama, Irak I, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Irak II. No Significant Media Critique/Oposition from a 'collapsed' other side meant a public compliant to accept every preposterous justification of terror bombing/lethal engagement by our part.
-The unipolar and overt use of 'creative chaos' strategies for impose transnational corporate interests on targeted countries against the well being and the same survival of our/their citizens causing growing and desesperate economical inequalities between our/their elites sold to 'free' market gospel and the majority in most cases of our/their enpoverished citizenry. Of course we were led to believe this suicidal path was the correct: The Soviet Union disappeared because its failed 'equality ideology' then we must be as 'unequal' as possible. The Corporate Charlie Wilsons and the Neocons of the World were working in the shadows in that time just for mass-induce this inference.
-The squander of the historical oportunity of -through negotiation- eliminating/drastically reducing weaponry and nuclear arsenals. The other side had collapsed (for whatever provoqued or unprovoqued reasons) then our side saw no pressure to do but cosmetic changes in these arenas. To the contrary
we used/use all our rhetorical resources: 'fight against ethnic cleansing', 'war on terrorism', 'defense against space missiles' for justifying exponential increasing expending here.
-The use of orchestrated openness of the press in the new 'free' countries for masterfully censoring 'western style' all legitimate East Block's people cries for recovering their 'socialistic' liberties. Very simple: never/scarcely were/are reported inconvenient facts as the unnumbered 'I want my wall back' and 'red flags' marchs, movements and protests in these places. Better even, the media in these cases were/are choked with 'free' flood of trashy news.Sound familiar to anyone?
-The detailed copying/improvement by the West -now in the twenty one century- of the really bad aspect of the destroyed communistic rule: its orwellian
'lives of others' security apparatus. Supported by a technology not dreamed before its befall we are renacting the worse of that world without a bit of its many positive human and social aspects. A Global Police State to the service of unmasked Wealth, Power and Privilege (the few) instead of to the service of socially molded wealth, power and privilege (commisars and corruption notwithstanding) of regular 'people' (the many). Is 'workers' too a extreme word?
-The seeding of doubt -without context- towards 'socialistic ways' as 'condemned to failure as in the Soviet Union' in the long stalemate of alternative movements of globalization against sanctionated global pillage of nations and resources and in dealing with sustainable responses to climate change. However every time is more and more clear for sustainability scholars that only in recovering a 'socialistic' indigeneous 'Sharing of the Earth' view we can survive in the environmentally trying and chaotic world ahead. The alternative, accepting the cynical view of the Economic Hit Man Charlie Wilson of 'us better that them' will only bring to execution the long planned mass elimination of the 'undesirables' of the planet caught in the way of opposing the destructive waste of the elites.
Is confusing in all that everyone 'in the know' now sigh in the memory of much better times confronting the 'Godless' and KGB controled 'Enemy'?
Is interesting how some Hollywood directors/producers are falling in line to the 'winning hearts and minds' fairy tale regime propaganda. For example see the very last conveyed 'meme' of the six hours 2007 'fact based' CIA movie produced by Rydley Scott 'The Company': "We were right because we won"(or something very similar). Anyway now we know that another talented moviemaker (Mike Nichols) has identical end message in other terms. A very serviceable coincidence.
NDNative,
I think it's a great idea. The trouble is that the FBI, CIA, and NSA were set up by warmongers such as Harry Truman, never much of a liberal to begin with on either social or even most economic issues, under secret executive orders. That's the real reason liberals never bother to clamp down on them just like they allow Corporate America to FUCK and ABUSE America to DEATH. For all that the hate talk "conservatives" give about Truman and "big government", it's pathetic that they are in bed with those agencies. The day the Grover Norquists actually call for abolishing the CIA and DEA is when "conservatives" will actually be keeping up on any of their promises to reduce the government size and cut down on excessive bureaucracy. Until then, it's government expansion to infinity and more episodes of "Bureaucracy Gone Wild !"
Chalmers Johnson is always worth reading, provided one isn't looking to be cheered up.
I don't follow Tom Hanks very closely (or go to the movies much), but I didn't consider him a full-blown wingnut.
However, this film seems to have mixed messages similar to "Forrest Gump", in which a supposedly likable character has dramatic and amusing adventures while conveying the reactionary, anti-intellectual message that the best Amerikans are innocent folks who don't think or feel too deeply, but simply live according to the impulses of their good hearts and good old common sense.
It's the structure of the US, what it's designed to do -- not to expand rights, but to preserve wealth and property accumulation -- that determines the actions of its agencies & officials, not the other way around; the heores-villains versions that personalize history make it a deliberate creation of certain individuals who happen to move events this way or that.
Celebrity exemplifies the superstitious approach to history; and these are the films that a profiteering industry has to make. The heterogeneity of Hollywood product, its basically capitalist quixotism, yokes idealism with investment. Nothing better expresses the oxymoron of American liberalism. Right-wingers think of liberals as leftists, because the goal of social equality and even more of economic equity horrify them; actual leftists look at liberals as guardians of a mechanism that produces misty visions of concord, of harmonious community and general equality, but they are far more devoted to the machine that produces the illusions. Empire is a product of economic/political liberalism, not its opposite; and imperial project can only be renounced by nativists who view foreign folk as contaminants, or from an unsentimental socialist one. Americans will continue to dispatch and maintain storm troopers across the globe as long as they believe that liberal democracy can somehow undo its own system of sustenance.
rob- in the beginning of your post, what do you mean?
Man, after reading some of the comments here, I had to do a second take
at the title of webpage. For a brief moment I thought I was in freeperville
rather than commondreams-ville.
Silly me, anyway., ...on the subject of the mujahadeen.,
have any of you folks heared of MEGAOil and of Gary Best and his use of Afghan
Mujahadeen (and former US SF) mercs to fight against Armenia in 1991-1992?
Armenia-Azer war? Charlie Wilson and Dick Armitage ended up on the board
of directors for the US-Azeri Chamber of Commerce, circa 1996....
Crazy world, eh? US-Azer and Charlie Wilson?
Very nuts, especially in context to the new write ups concerning Sibel Edmonds.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19015.htm
later,
Rob
Wait until 'The Bear and The Dragon' join forces to humble the 'Bully of the World'.
Bill from Saginaw-
you seem to be focusing on what is going on in terms of factual values, and maybe less so in emotive gestures,
I want to ask you about something I noticed when reading Blowback, which I was fascinated by, but have not had an opportunity to finish/assimilate. One thing that impressed me was Johnson's willingness to re-evaluate how his position had changed, as time passed and he saw a new world at day break.
I am wondering what input you may have on the following quotes from his book
"Arms sales, both domestic and foreign, have become one of the pentagon's most important missions"
"I believe the profligate waste of our resources on irrelevant weapons systems and the Asian economic meltdown as well as the continuous trial of military "accounts," and of terrorist attacks on American installations and embassies, are all portraits of a twenty-first century crisis in America's informal empire, an empire based on the projection of military power to every corner of the world and the use of American capital and markets to force global economic [integration] on our terms..."
I was surprised when I first read it, as I was not aware of the attitudes and information now commonplace, as evidenced here, there are people who do not readily espouse this idea of american exceptionalism. I want to know, with whatever background you can offer, more insights into what these or other examples imply.
also, your name is that of MI, no? How would you describe the attitudes of your community towards politics?
Actually, arming the mujahideen was a great success (for the Neocons who needed another Pearl Harbor)
bolwriter-
A heavier question to ask is how the US military intends to resupply the Green Zone fortress bubble once the insurgency decides to start using stingers against the American supply planes seeking to land at the Baghdad airport. If that tactic is coupled with a conventional infantry campaign to cut the overland supply routes from Kuwait into Baghdad, the fat will really be in the fire.
Bill from Saginaw
What I've wanted to know ever since the summer of 2006 when Hezbollah defeated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is whether they had old arms from the CIA's supplying of the Afghanistani mujahadeen. The signal feature of Israel's defeat is that they found to their surprise that they could not use their helicopters in combat. They kept getting shot down. Now Stinger missiles are designed for and very effective at doing just that and of course the US supplied them to the mujahadeen in Afghanistan so that they could be used against Soviet attack helicopters. So did US Stingers help Hezbollah defeat Israel in 2006? I know it's been a long time, but I wonder.
Arundhati Roy sez...and I'll paraphrase...that terrorism is the privatization of war...While our government was arming Al Quaeda, the Taliban, Osama & Company...they were freedom fighters. Our government's free-market capitalistic agenda created strong organizations that now fight us. Now we call them terrorists. If Milton Friedman Chicago School Capitalists are right, the free-market warriors will prevail. Our government is Dr. Frankenstein and his monster will soon destroy him. I'm not sure who I'll be rooting for.
The rw-nuts planned this whole situation in ME. By supporting the Islamic jihadists to destroy the Soviet Union, they set up another evil enemy to take the blame for their next major war.
9/11 was an inside job, but who better to blame than OBL, AQ, and the Taliban, so that the US would have the excuse it needed for bombing and invading Afghanistan?
Everyone knows the Taliban are misogynistic skum, thanks to the constant propaganda the corporate MSM fed the US citizens, during the years leading up to 9/11, so of course, nobody had any problem with the US military bombing the hell out of them.
Wars are not random things. They don't just all-of-a-sudden happen, competely by surprise. The war-party experts plan wars decades in advance and make sure the majority of Americans are willing to support them when they finally have the green-light.
The war-party/war-profiteers are smart vultures. They are also the most dangerous characters the human race on the planet Earth has ever known.
Tom Hanks is a rich, right wing asshole and Mr. Karzai is known in Afghanistan as "the mayor of Kabul".
Several people here seem to have missed the point;
"as originally written by Aaron Sorkin" ..... included the following line for Avrakotos: "Remember I said this: There's going to be a day when we're gonna look back and say 'I'd give anything if [Afghanistan] were overrun with Godless communists'."
That was a line from the script that was left out...and not an opinion by Chalmers Johnson.
Last weeks freedom fighters and this weeks terrorists. Last weeks fascists are this weeks American government.
The author is clearly WAY behind on the memos.
I played a Zbigniew Brzezinski gig in the grand ballroom of a posh Charlotte, NC hotel back in '86. By the time he'd finished droning on in a nearly incomprehensible manner for WELL over an hour, the audience was ready to dance.
Before the gig, we (the band) were lounging in over-stuffed chairs in the Hotel lobby when Zbig strutted through, accompanied by two male aides. He looked very purposeful, as though he were about to save humanity from extinction by delivering a speech that was probably understood by only five people out of the 300-odd assembled.
I think his true purpose was to lose the entire audience just to show how smart he was when compared to Reagan, who even by 1986 was being viewed as an illiterate dolt.
Ignorance, corruption, and superficiality keep piling up. Charlie Wilson's War is just another scrap of it. One's hope is that it will become the fertilizer for a new and better life.
Chalmers Johnson is a genuine HERO for his studies and books on the catastrophe that is the military-industrial-complex.
Skip the dumb movie and read his books Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis.
You will be fascinated and disgusted to learn what the U.S.A. has become and what it costs in money, lives and goowill.
I recently saw the film and was also surprised that it was considered a comedy, it should be considered a tragicomedy.
I went, foolishly trusting a reviewer on NPR who seemed to think it was an accurate rendering of events, and a history lesson for all.
After attempting to build likable, but quirky, characters in the likes of Wilson and a CIA operative and a right wing Christian nut case, we are eventually shown cold blooded Russians callously machine gunning innocent women, old men, and children, while they carry on sexist conversation on their radios. Then we are drawn into rooting for afghan "freedom fighters" as they fumble with a shoulder fired missile, cheering, with the rebels, as the missile hits the nasty Russian helicopter and blows it apart.
According to the "based on true events" movie we are led to believe that the cold war was finally won by an alcoholic sexist Congressman, a nerdy, flippant, burnt out (but genius) CIA operative, and a sexy, wealthy, Christian fundamentalist, all true blooded American characters. I almost teared up along with Wilson (Hanks) as he was accepted his prestigious CIA award. Gosh Golly we're such a lovable bunch ain't we?
Change the aggressors uniforms, put different decals on the helicopters, call "freedom fighters", "insurgents", and you have another comedy, a fun filled sequel. Maybe that one will be even funnier.
I saw the film last week, and it never occurred to me that it would be considered comedy. The subject matter is still far too raw and has far too many echos in current news to be comedy material. Within the first few minutes I realized that this was going to be another typical Hollywood production, ie entertainment and trivialization. Propaganda it surely is, and I'm frankly disgusted that Hanks, Roberts, and Hoffman would participate in a project like this, but, after all, they are American actors and not of the Sean Penn sort. The fact that it is misinterpreted by mainstream reviewers is only further proof of the dumbing down of American analytical abilities.
May 25, 2003 - The day Bush paraded on a carrier in his play warrior suit and the banner proclaimed "Mission Accomplished."
It is approaching five years since that day. Since so little of value seems to have actually been accomplished, isn't it about time we finally started to ask, what was the REAL mission?
I am absolutely "SICKENED" "NAUTIOUS" at what our Government/CIA has done in our name. We the citizens had better band together somehow and come up with organizations for the purpose of educating our populace, and ending the CIA, and the NEOCON efforts to control the worlds oil wealth, IT IS HIGH TIME THAT WE GET OFF OIL !!!! WE NEED TO DITCH THESE BASTARDS AND THEIR AIMS OF IMPERIALISTIC CONTROL. The hell of it is that we the public are "NEARLY POWERLESS" or should I say "MORE THAN POWERLESS" ANY IDEAS?????? WE SHOULD START BY IMPEACHING AND CHARGING BUSH AND COMPANY WITH WAR CRIMES< AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY !!!!
WTF--Georgia is one of the oldest Orthodox Christian cultures/states; its breakaway province of Abkhazia ia Muslim, as are the Ossetias.
The movie reminds me of an attempt to perpetuate what Englehardt calls "Victory Culture." That Tom Hanks--Top Gun, Saving Private Ryan--bought the rights to the book for this film tends to confirm this for me, especially when examining his two other films noted above through the lens of victory culture.
WTF, dcbeltway, AdeletheCzech, greenerthanthou, mrpickwick, and friends-
Chalmers Johnson correctly points out that Jimmy Carter signed his finding in July, 1979, and that he and Zbiggy did, in a sense, bait and finesse the Soviets into invading that December, in order to ultimately bog the Russkies down in the mountains of Afghanistan just like America had gotten itself bogged down in the bloody quagmire of southeast Asia a decade earlier.
It was indeed Cold War gamesmanship, plain and simple, followed by major blowback from the mujadaheen that we Americans so cleverly armed and enabled. Mission accomplished I.
But a full take on this historical timeline should emphasize that Zahir Shah had been ousted in a Pashtun coup several years before any of this happened, and Afghan Communists, in turn, surprizingly overthrew Zahir's successor (Daoud Khan) in 1978, probably with some covert help of the KGB. Nonetheless, this background was all well before Jimmy Carter's authorization for covert intervention.
The Communist regime in Kabul (true to the Stalinist ideological model that religion was the opiate of the masses) proceeded to attack mosques and initiate a general purge of the Muslim clergy from Afghanistan, in order to cleanse the tribal areas of the mullahs and tribal potentates, so that socialism could then flower. Bad move.
The devout streamed south into refugee camps in northern Pakistan, where the Generals and the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI were waiting with open arms and a sympathetic ear. The Paks armed and organized the Afghan guerillas, gave them some tips on bomb making, and sent them back north fired up to wage jihad. The Kremlin then answered the Kabul regime's request for assistance, and the great game of Charlie Wilson's War was on.
This was a match made in Islamic heaven, from Pakistan's viewpoint: the CIA began shoveling arms and millions of dollars in secret aid their way all in the name of anti-Communism, which the Saudis literally matched dollar-for-dollar in the name of Allah. Uncle Sam provided hi tech weaponry, eventually to include stinger missles to shoot down the Red Army's air support. The House of Saud for its part set up a foot soldier recruitment pipeline of madrassas and training camps that stretched from the Kush to northern Africa, a network of which Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zwahiri became integral parts.
15,000 dead Russian soldiers later, Moscow cut its losses and withdrew. Uncle Sam abruptly cut off all aid to the brave Afghan freedom fighters, gleefully savoring their black ops victory. This was not solely an act of American stupidity however. The Pakistan regime during the same time frame had hanged Bhutto, set up a clandestine nuclear bomb program, stolen millions from the US aid flow, and had made everybody's top ten list of nations known to sponsor international terrorism.
Several months after the Russians left, the Communist government in Kabul fell to the resurgent warlords. In the chaos that followed, the Saudis and the ISI remained focused on insuring the Afghanistan regime would be ethnically Pashtun and hospitable to Islam. Thus, the Taliban were born.
I disagree with WTF's reading of central Asian history, that Russia has lived in relative peace with Muslims in Georgia and "until recently in Chechnya." Moscow has been sending armies to quell rebellions in Chechnya for over 600 years. The modern Soviet Union was every bit as hostile and repressive towards Islam in its southern socialist republics as the regime was towards the eastern Greek Orthodox church and later towards the Roman Catholic church in eastern Europe.
We know that for over a decade the Pakistani ISI and Charlie Wilson type covert operations boys of the CIA drank macho toasts and slapped one another with towels in the locker room in comeraderie as only soldiers with plausible deniability can do. The United States abruptly walked away from Pakistan under George H W Bush, and relations remained strained (to say the least) throughout the Clinton years.
The new President of the United States should promise is to personally review all of the materials withheld from Congress and the 9/11 Commission, including those concerning our intelligence community's relationships with other spook agencies for the first nine months of calendar year 2001, and make his or her own decision about whether with the passage of some much time, perhaps additional documents should be declassified.
Or to put it more bluntly, we ought to have an honest conversation about blowback. As Molly Ivins would say, it's really okay for adults to talk about these things.
Bill from Saginaw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcS0NzoSJcU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp0Bju0H4Q4
Small sample of what entertainers that give a shit produce.
"To save you we may have to kill you
For freedom you may have to die
#1 at liberation
liberating life from bodies
helping spirits fly
freedom from LIFE"
from Operation Iraqi Liberation(O.I.L.) Anti-Flag
Not all entertainers are promoting fascism.
I've been suspect of Hanks since Howard Zinn mentioned the way Private Ryan type movies glorify war.
It's difficult to rally for peaceful means when a nation is brought up on blood ,guts and glory.
Oh i forgot it's only entertainment.
I'm glad people are pointing out the outrageous propaganda that is this movie. Every time I see the commercial I am outraged. I blogged about it in Dec. How can they feed us contradictory propaganda at the same time and expect us not to notice? Is it a test to see how stupid we are? We're told to hate the "islamo-fascists" and we're told they're freedom fighters?
And I also think the Afghans would have been better off under the Soviet backed government, at least the one the Soviets originally backed, before he was killed. Maybe not the religious Afghans, but the women, for sure.
The religious nuts here don't like women outside the home, either, but most of us disagree. You're always going to find people who prefer to remain in the old oppressive ways. If the far right Christians take over and institute biblical law, most of us aren't going to be too happy. Especially women, gays and atheists.
"It's a movie, just entertainment, not propaganda."
Nothing is ever "just entertainment."
Yes, a clear eyed view of history for once. It is worth noting that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan for exactly the same reasons the Americans claimed to be doing so - to prevent the rise in fundamentalism in that country. They had considerably more justification for doing so, since they share a border with Afghanistan. And yet all of this (and the social improvements that the Soviets brought to Afghanistan, in which they invested far more than the Americans have done) background is simply ignored by the American media (just as the reality of Iran and Chile, to name just two, are). Tom Hanks should be ashamed of himself for making a propaganda film.
It's a movie, just entertainment, not propaganda. Artists seldom acknowledge a message, only that they're trying to sell a song, or a painting or whatever. What with all of the anxiety over the middle east and Iran (especially after the Hormuz/Tonkin incident today), you have to ask an artist like Tom Hanks: what the hell were you thinking?
Kivals:
Thanks for the response. But, I think you have answered your own question. The corporate profits are "socialized" for their benefit. If Big Oil had to pay for the military support, they would be out of business.
The economics are very complex and nearly impossible to pin down. If there is in fact $10 trillion in oil and gas resources at stake, what portion of that is actual profit ?
And try to project the military costs in terms over the next century or so ?
And what are the "blowback" costs of such foreign policy? 9/11 damage is hard to estimate including a "Homeland Security" agency from now until the end of time.
And the dollar began to decline against the Euro as soon as we invaded Iraq. With the dollar declining against other currency, how does that add up ? Trillions perhaps.
And the current imperial adventures are being funded with borrowed money, so calculate the interest on the loans ?
And how much will global warming cost by burning these fossil fuels rather than investing in alternative energy sources ?
And what will the loss of America's legtimacy in the world be as other nations begin to form alliances rather than play our game. While distracted in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of South America has slipped out from under the American iron heel.
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