Though a comic movie it contains a big amount of seriousity. The western support to the Afghan guerillas hit America like a boomerang. The support was the birth of Taleban, whose regime was a safehaven for terrorist and led to the infamous events 9/11. And Charlie Wilson knows. As he says in the end: "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we *beep* up the endgame."
shareOh my god, you're the first person to make this observation. Not in the 12 years since 9/11 has anyone put this all together!
But seriously, the Muj and the Taliban are different. The former are mostly ethnic Pashtuns while the latter coalesced around the wealthy "Afghan Arab" war tourists who wanted to secure Afghanistan as a base of operations in the 90s...
Afghan muj and Taliban are two very different entities. The former were myriad groups w.r.t. their tribal ethnicity. There were several other arab muj fighters like bin Laden who "found their calling" in the war against communism. These guys were nothing but pampered brats with grand delusions(read about bin Laden's plan to counter Saddam's possible conquest of Saudi Arabia to understand what I'm speaking about).
The Taliban were created by Pakistan to exert their control over Afghanistan for regional dominance. That the funding flowed through them must have made it much more easier. As long as the results came, US was happy to not follow up and check with the end use of the funding.
The Taliban wouldn't have existed if the USA hadn't have backed the Islamist extremists (The Mujaheddin) against the Secular Afghan government (the one that allowed women freedoms)
shareI agree.
This is a good movie...
But the history is tragic...
In any scenario the communists were better than Muslim fanatics.
Divide and conquer is a efficient strategy, but sometimes one needs to calculate incidental results better... Coldwar world was safer than our "terrorist age"...
Cold War brought us the terrorist age. Along with genocide and numerous wars. US and Soviet Union didnt give a *beep* what they did around the world as long as they hot their own results and we saw end the result.
shareWell actually, they didn't hate us at first. Not till the first Gulf war, when we had a base in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden didn't want the Saudi's to let the US put a base there, cause he said we would never leave which sadly has been proven true so far) and to have infidels like that in the same country that has Mecca and Medina would blasphemy. Wasn't till soon after that, that the Taliban started its efforts to destroy America. Was many factors that helped to create the Taliban and its hatred of America and the western world.
Like the old saying, hindsight is 20/20. Easy to look back and say OMG, their actions though were noble and trying to help people helped to create a evil we have to deal with today. If all felt that way, no one would ever help anyone for fear of tragic events afterwards.
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I have no clue why the label "comedy" was put on this movie, by that standard "Idiocracy" can be considered "history" ;)
"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we *beep* up the endgame."
This is the point of this whole story. A few remarks in the end, pointing out the big mistake made back then.
And, again, more recently in Iraq: Helping a country to blow everything to pieces and leaving them with the big mess.