To me he did nothing impressive except use U.S. tax money to fund U.S. imperalism and to help the oil idustry who ten years latter would benifit form the taliban controlled Afganstan. That money could have gone to help U.S. citezens .
P.S. I am a liberal and I think that he should be in jail for mismangment of U.S. funds
I enjoyed the movie. Very educational. I think the movie is meant to be sarcastic and many people think he is a hero.
When I saw this movie, the entire theater was filled with many older people (35+). They seemed to have enjoyed it, or the sarcasim.
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I personally think the word hero gets tossed around a little too much in our society. Do any of you truly know the definition of the word?
shareyeah sucket jack poker blind
sharea definition of hero I've heard attributed to Medal of Honor recipients is that if they did not do that which they are honored for, would we think any less of them.
so is Charlie Wilson a hero -- not by this definition. did he do some courageous acts -- I think so.
This is not the forum for that kind of ad hominem remark. Please confine your postings to Rants & Raves, and allow the rest of us to enjoy a reasoned discussion here on imdb. Thank you.
shareI have wondered about any "intent" in the film, in terms of what they're showing us. I think in this instance the film stayed quite neutral and just presented a story where the viewers can clearly see whatever they want to see. Is that a good thing? Who knows. Depends on how educated the viewer is.
Anway, if you would like to see Charlie Wilson as a flawed hero that helped take down the soviets, that part's there. If you want to view the film as an expose on exploitation of budgetary loopholes and abuse of power, that's there. If you want to see it either as support for or an argument against "nation-building", I guess it can go either way, but only "for" if you ignore things that have happened since 1992 or so.
Personally I find it a compelling story, but truly disturbing in that our tax money was used/budgeted without congressional oversight because of supposed secrecy needs and that all this was completely legal. Also upsetting is the fact that people will laud Wilson as a hero whereas these actions are clearly the direct cause of the situation in Pakistan today. All the Bhuttos and other Pakistani leaders have supported (financially and otherwise) Al-Quaeda and their predecessors as a means to keep control in the nation, and now we're suddenly supposed to be surprised by this? Our government knew of this financial arrangement all along as well as the intent of the groups.
I do believe that all of this Charlie Wilsons work did lead up to 9/11, but only now that we have seen the effects of his actions I think it's easy to say he was wrong.
What would have happened if he hadn't intervened. Could the soviets have possibly gotten so strong, attacking other nations, that our nation would have been in turmoil. Without a time machine I don't believe we will ever know.
What would have happened if we paid to build schools. Again, there is no way of knowing. Remember, we did train some of them to fight the Soviets and these fighters knew it was the US giving the aide. They knew the US was fundemental in their bringing down the Soviets and yet we were attacked on 9/11. Though Al Queda was not formed directly out of these actions, the dominoes did fall creating this terrorist group.
Might it have been even worse if we did build the schools. We, as Americans, do not usually understand the mentality of what it's like to be brought up in such an underdeveloped nation. The actions may be so deeply engraved in them that it may take 3-4 generations to train them differently.
It is too easy to look back today and say this is what we should have done yesterday.
What would have happened if he hadn't intervened.
That is truly a great assumption, but not a fact.
shareI do believe this is the most intelligent post i've ever read on imdb.
Nations taking over other nations does not mean that the usurped nation will become a huge rape-camp, contrary to american belief...
Yes they would have been educated, something the u.s needs to learn to remember in their current holy war.
The USSR would have had installed a secular, socialist government which would have divided up feudal estates, nationalized the natural resources of Afghanistan, build roads, electrified the country, initiated public health campaigns, given non-Pashto ethnicities a voice in the government (communists and socialists do not believe in tribal divisions), educated women, etc. In short, made Afghanistan a 20th century nation instead of a 19th century one.
Actually USSR's education system produced MANY talents of the 20th century. When the USSR collapsed West grabbed all that brainpower and brought them to their respective countries (mostly US) where they worked and still work on many scientific projects. News usually reports this "UCLA researchers have discovered [insert the name of the discovery here]", without going on to much detail on who actually worked on it, and more digging shows that it was mostly a bunch of brainiacs from Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan etc.
USSR also modernized all the Asian republics under its control (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan), and brought them to the 20th century standard. Afghanistan has many groups from these countries, hence it is a great example of what others would have been like if they were not part of the USSR.
In fact Soviet Union's foreign policy was not only built on supplying cheap/free weapons and food to friendly countries, building an infrastructure and giving citizens education, FREE education. Soviets built a huge university in Moscow just for the foreign students (mostly from Africa) and these people took that knowledge back with them to their countries and spread them there. Most professionals in the African countries that were friendly with the USSR are professionals because of that, same goes for the Middle East.
No USSR was not a perfect country, far from it I should know I live there, and no it would have not made Afghanistan into Germany, or Japan, but I can guarantee you that Afghanistan would have been a whole different place now, if they went with the Soviet plan. And also we can say that 9/11 might have not happened.
The collapse of the USSR brought many good things to its people, but nobody wants to mention the amount of death, hunger, chaos, and suffering that it brought with it, so many civil wars. But I guess thats what happens when a war is lost, cold or hot.
So please do some research before posting
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I think it's high time all of us give up the arrogant assumption that we can remake a nation in our own image if only we occupy it long enough.
shareIf that's what you think, I have some friends from Poland, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and a few other places who would like to have a little chat with you.
shareThe person that started this thread is extremely ignorant. The fact that you're ignoring the importance of the Cold War is proof that you have no idea what you're talking about. It's true that we help fund a group that is now our enemy, but we had no choice. No one else was going to fight the Soviet Union and that was our only shot to defeat the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union armed the Chinese and Koreans in the Korean War, they armed the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam Conflict. The Soviet Union had armed nuclear missiles aimed at us in Cuba and we were dangerous close to a full blown nuclear war. They were basically indirectly responsible for thousands of U.S deaths. To sum it up, they were our enemy.
One, the Soviet Union was more of a threat to U.S security than Islamic Extremists are today. If you think the U.S is imperialistic than what would you call the Soviet Empire? The Soviets had begun invading the Middle East and the United States had to do something about it. If the Soviets had succeeded in Afghanistan, they would surround Iran from two sides.
Two, if you're going by the movie, why should Charlie Wilson be arrested if he suggested that the U.S should help rebuild Afghanistan? Should every member of his committee be put in prison because of ignorance? If we're going to start jailing people for ignorance we're going to need more prisons. The U.S did the right thing by aiding the mujahideen, but the U.S and it's allies did a very ignorant thing by not helping them after the war was over. It was a bad mistake and we're paying for it now, but I fail to see how stopping the Russians from taking total control of Afghanistan and continuing to commit human rights violations is a total waste of tax dollars.
Since you're so intelligent, why don't you explain what you would do different during the 1980's. I would agree with you if you said that you would aid Afghanistan in fighting the Soviets, but you would give them aid to rebuild their nation. Hindsight is always 20/20 and that's all your arguement is. Life isn't black and white, it's just not the way things go. There's a very large gray area and the Cold War clearly falls into that category.
a secular, socialist republic that respects the rights of women. just like iraq before we had to tear it down. now we can look back in 10 years while iraq is being ruled by taliban type muslim extremist government, that doesn't allow it's citizens to be educated, or it's women to do anything, and say maybe saddam wasn't such a bad s.o.b. after all.
shareOne of the things that would have happened is Russia would have had access to a sea port...
share[deleted]
In 20 years time should an attack comes to the US from Indonesian islamic radicals.
Will you think the people in the US who supplied aid to Indonesia during the Tsunami and the recent earthquakes as people who mismanaged US funds also?
We supplied Indonesia with military armaments ? To help fuel internal conflict among tribes and drug lords ? Where did you read that one ?
The conflicts in the middle east are intensified directly by United States' aid towards private interest in the name of humanity,anti-terroristm, but more so, economy. Un-surprisingly enough, the price of gass is at an all time high, terrorist actions have increased all over the world, and now OUR western militaries are bombing innocent civilans... (Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq,)
And you know it's getting worse when your local news covers that *beep* Because normaly it goes unheard of.
bottom line is, only a film this good can get so many people arguing over the messages and themes brought up in it.
charlie is a hero
Agreed. :D
sharebottom line is, only a film this good can get so many people arguing over the messages and themes brought up in it.
Mr. Wilson's World Order: Charlie Wilson's War
by George Sax
Well, finally the American film industry has done it. At last, there’s a movie about American foreign policies and programs in the Middle East and West Asia, in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Americans can feel good about.
Charlie Wilson’s War gives moviegoers a hero, a guy who strives to achieve fine ends in that region of the world, but one with distinctively human dimensions, a guy who knows how to have fun when he’s not helping to effect great international goals. As the New York Times’ A.O. Scott put it, in a typical response, it stands “in welcome contrast to the plodding, somber earnestness of some recent movies I will tactfully refrain from naming.”
Here, here, and about time! (No wonder those other somber war movies are tanking.)
You can’t accuse director Mike Nichols and writer Aaron Sorkin of being plodding. They’ve packaged and showcased a more-or-less real-life character, foibles, failings, lubricious excesses and all. Does he overindulge in alcohol and other less legal chemicals? As impersonated by Tom Hanks, he’s a charmingly, harmlessly roguish guy. And nobody’s fool. He knows how to get things done when the chips are down, thank goodness.
At least, that’s the movie’s version. In Nichols and Sorkin’s telling (based rather selectively on the late George Crile’s biography of the same title), Charlie Wilson, congressional representative from Texas’ Second District, spearheaded an effort to obtain American financing for the Afghan forces fighting against the Soviet Union’s occupation of their country in the 1980s. The movie depicts good old Charlie as instrumental in defeating the Russians, forcing their withdrawal from Afghanistan and, therefore, also helping to cause the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War. Hey, not bad, right? And a hell of a story. Hold that thought.
Nichols and Sorkin’s smart, knowing, often comedic take on the events surrounding Wilson’s heroic efforts is undeniably amusing and deftly managed. Their movie glides, often merrily, along the corridors and into the offices of Washington power holders. It also takes us into a couple of boudoirs, a hot tub and a crucial belly dance in Egypt, but it’s less interested in these entertainingly lubricous sidelights than the story of how Charlie, a veteran pol whose previous chief legislative achievement had been getting re-elected five times, helped save the Afghan resistance from annihilation.
This guy may be a party animal, but he’s also a shrewd cookie who’s picked up a few chits during his career. At one point he tells a staffer who’s concerned about constituent opinion that “constituents don’t elect candidates; contributors do.” The filmmakers have adopted a posture of waggish irreverence toward the Washington power structure, but it’s in the service of an underlying serious message. In their version, he’s brought on board the aid-to-Afghanistan campaign by Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), an outlandishly conceived and played rich, rightist, rigidly Christian Houston socialite and former beauty queen. She shares her favors with Charlie and gives him his marching orders. He’s to use his position on the House defense appropriations subcommittee to get money for those valiant anti-Communist freedom fighters. Since Charlie is already interested in them—although he certainly doesn’t share Herring’s religious motivation—it’s not a hard sell.
He also makes common cause with a vulgarly, comically insubordinate C.I.A. agent (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who’s disgusted by the agency’s tepid, bean-counting response to the Soviet invasion.
The now retired Wilson says that the movie goes easy on him in its portrayal of his peccadillos and high (and low) jinks, but it gives him a much more important record purging than that. The filmmakers rely on potted play history, with a pungent ideological infusion.
The real Wilson’s boots are covered in clay and blood. He and his war wrought disastrous consequences that still resonate dangerously today. A freelance jihadist and soi-disant religious authority named Osama bin Laden got his anti-Western start in that war, with American assistance. The US funding largely went to Islamist zealots, and one brutally ambitious warlord who continues to challenge the sway of the American-supported elected government in Afghanistan. Then there are the Taliban forces that US and NATO troops are still battling for control of the country in a five-year-old war, and who rose to prominence fighting the Russians with our weaponry and dollars. Hundreds of thousands of civilians suffered and tens of thousands perished in consequence of Charlie’s war. (It wasn’t really his. The movie exaggerates his importance.) When Timesman Scott wrote that Charlie Wilson’s War provides “a bracing, cheering, present-day moral…a reminder that high principles are not incompatible with the pleasure principle,” he’s suffering from historical amnesia, or spinning.
A delusional travesty.
Wilson’s efforts were fueled by old-fashioned reckless American anti-communism. He went from helping to arm Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza to helping arm militant Islamists who didn’t relinquish their disdain for us while accepting the aid.
The Hollywood liberals responsible for Charlie Wilson’s War, principally Hanks, who pursued the film rights to Crile’s book, may not have intended the nasty, recrudescent Cold War ethos their movie conveys, but, in any event, their effort to leaven the subject with ribaldry and wit doesn’t seem to be succeeding.
The movie’s performance at the box office last week was anemic. Moviegoers aren’t buying into it
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share As previously stated, Afghanistan has no oil wealth. They have however sold Opium for many, many ages. For it being "US Imperialism" we had quite little influence in that region over the years, and in fact despite what you will say the government there held on for quite some time after the Soviets left.
Afghanistan was the biggest part of destroying the Soviet Union, not the only part, but the largest part. Minding you this ended decades of oppression not only in Central Asia but also Eastern Europe. The Soviets were going to get pushed out of Afghanistan anyways, it was just plain too expensive to maintain their presence there. Making it harder on the Soviets expedited their defeat in Afghanistan and destroyed the Soviet Union.
Contrary to popular belief the US was not the only one supplying guns to rebels in Afghanistan, many nations did including China and the UK... pretty much anyone who benefited from a Soviet collapse. Not to mention the virtually endless flow of Arab Mujahadeen fighters bent on kicking the Atheistic Soviets out of "Muslim Land".
Osama Bin Laden did not receive aid from the US. His forces operated separately, if you don't believe me look it up on Wikipedia, if you don't believe that I can cite it at other websites. In addition his motivations were already set before the Afghan war and had nothing to do with the conflict, but were rather rooted in the Israeli conflicts and in particular Lebanon.
Further more Bin Laden did not invent modern terrorism and did not create Muslim Extremism in general. The PFLP is largely credited as being the first modern terrorist group, they were founded in 1967. Modern suicide bombings were however developed by Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. I would be hard pressed to say which single person is most responsible for the spread of Muslim Extremism, but in my opinion it would probably be Ayatollah Khomeini, the man primarily responsible for the Iranian revolution. I wouldn't even put Bin Laden in the top 5.
If I had to credit one single event it would be The Six Day War. In just Six days the Israelis completely destroyed the armed forces of every meaningful Middle Eastern power. This completely humiliated the Middle East as a whole and led to indignation that lingers on today. The Yom Kippur war only cemented the fact that the Arab World could not hand Israel a military defeat. Since conventional tactics weren't going to work, they switched to non-conventional tactics, essentially Modern Terrorism. When their attacks could not shake the will of Israel, they turned their attention to their allies in Europe and the USA. Read a statement by Bin Laden some time and count how many times he uses the words "Jew" and "Zionist".
some people here just dont understand the cold war
wilson was a hero in terms of what he did to assist in the fall of the soviet union
Actually once the Soviets started leaving the infighting started nearly immediately. The central so called gov. did not hold up for long, it never had control, and collapsed very rapidly.
How can anybody say that Bin Laden's group (or anybody else's) did not receive US aid? If it was not US aid it was Saudi Aid, which got there because of US asking their partners to match their "donations".
Research The Safari Club
Pretty interesting
Afghanistan Enters the Equation
In 1978, Islamic fighters backed by the Safari Club began taunting the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan (167). The Safari Club's Islamic fighters began conducting cross-border raids into Soviet territory (167). It was not too long before the United States got into the action. A Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would provide the power elite with a pretext for several different projects. First of all, the dialectic rivalry that the elite had facilitated between the East and West called for the Soviet's having their equivalent to Vietnam. Second, the power elite needed to create enemies for future Hegelian activism. In the name of fighting communism, the Islamic people could be radicalized with a violent form of their religion. When blow back finally came from that radicalization campaign, the elite would be there to take advantage of it. Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, admitted to luring the Soviet Union in the Afghanistan trap during an interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur:
Q: 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.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. (No pagination)
Brzezinski presented this idea to Carter in a 1979 memo (Trento 318). In this memo, Brzezinski informed Carter that the downside to the plan was that efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation in Pakistan would have to be abandoned (318). After all, Pakistan's cooperation in the anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan was an absolute must. The National Security Advisor had provided the excuse needed for the United States government to look the other way while the Islamic bomb was being created.
It was not difficult for observers to look at Carter and Brzezinski and determine who was the puppet and who was the puppeteer. Carter's campaign adviser Hamilton Jordan had warned about Brzezinski prior to the election when he stated: "If, after the inauguration [of Jimmy Carter] you find… Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed and I'd quit" (Epperson 232). While Jordan did not quit, he had recognized that Brzezinski was an agent for the power elite (232). When forming the Trilateral Commission, Brzezinski turned to America's consummate oligarch, David Rockefeller, for assistance (235). Rockefeller was chairman of the elitist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) at the time (232). According to Ralph Epperson: "all eight American representatives to the founding meeting of the Commission were members of the CFR" (232).
Also of importance was Brzezinski's tie to the intelligence community. None other than the infamous Blond Ghost, Ted Shackley, had recruited Brzezinski into the CIA when Shackley was in the Agency's East European Division (Trento 166). Shackley was also a close friend of Edwin Wilson (58). It was with Wilson's help that Shackley was able to create "a private intelligence network beyond the reach of official accountability" (52). Ed Wilson's associate, Congressman Charlie Wilson, "acting in concert with the CIA, repeatedly blocked Congressional efforts to halt American funding of Pakistan" (316). Charles Wilson would even tell Pakistan's President Zia, "Mr. President, as far as I'm concerned you can make all the bombs you want" (316). Much of the money going to Pakistan was making its way into A.Q. Khan syndicate (313). Carter was being manipulated. The President, simple-minded as he was, did not have a ghost of a chance.
i'm glad you included that p.s. that you are a liberal, never could have figured that out, so thanks
shareThis was a very good film entertainment wise.
Hanks pulled of a role I thought he wouldnt be able to do as it was not a 'wholesome' role.
And it was not the dark and heavy (though good) film I thought it would be.
In fact Hanks' charisma makes Charlie likeable instead of smug and plays him as a charming guy instead of an arrogant macho womanizer. You could tell both woman and men, including a hardened CIA veteran (Hoffman was also amazing but had a small role) would be attracted to him.
So it was great as a Hollywod movie. However while basically accurate, I am not sure about the details. The filmmakers would all have to rely on Wilson who of course would make himself look good.
And as a pakistani (born and bred) let me ask all the Amercans on the board this:
Everybody is talking about the humanitarian impact Wilson had, the Soviets were massacring Afghans (this was true) etc. etc.
BUT!
Do you honestly think that the US (and Wilson) would have given a damn if an ally (say France or England) had invaded Afghanistan instead of the soviets and were massacring them?
It's not purely humanitarian. You got to basically destroy an enemy without losing a single one of your own people. Please dont compare it to an average war or even another humanitarian activity.
As Wilson says in the movie when talking to Roberts' character on the phone (paraphrasing): This is unlike any cold war in history.
You are a douche. There is a difference.
A liberal is primarily concerned with making the world a better place for his fellow man and helping those who need it most. They champion the rights of human kind.
A douche is a bladder full of water that is used only once that kills and flushes the nasty mung and smegma that develops on the inside of the uterin wall especially after intercourse. This is your lot in life.
It seems you are also in need of the definition of "imperialism"
Supplying a defenseless nation with the means to defend itself against a foreign oppressor is the exact opposite of imperialism.
It wasn't the USA fighting the Russians, it was the Afghanis and they were fighting for their lives, not for American imperialism.
I would say buy a clue but you don't have to waste your money. Go read a book.
Kodack
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The USSR would have had installed a secular, socialist government which would have divided up feudal estates, nationalized the natural resources of Afghanistan, build roads, electrified the country, initiated public health campaigns, given non-Pashto ethnicities a voice in the government (communists and socialists do not believe in tribal divisions), educated women, etc. In short, made Afghanistan a 20th century nation instead of a 19th century one.
"The USSR would have had installed a secular, socialist government which would have divided up feudal estates, nationalized the natural resources of Afghanistan, build roads, electrified the country, initiated public health campaigns, given non-Pashto ethnicities a voice in the government (communists and socialists do not believe in tribal divisions), educated women, etc. In short, made Afghanistan a 20th century nation instead of a 19th century one."
Well lets take a look at the other Russianstans. is Uzbekistan this modern socialist paradise you describe? Or did peasants suffer and die because the water tax to irrigate their fields was too much to plant crops and the only improvements were done to launch rockets?
Kodack
Uzbekistan is certanly a lot better off than Afghanistan. Considering it's situation as one of only two doubly landlocked nations in the world, this is quite a statement, and makes the fact of a crippling water tax unsurprising.
Let us get back to basics here. War is bad, education is good (and how far a once great nation has fallen, where this actually needs reiteration.) The US caused contributions of $1b for one but when it came time for the other could not spare a 1000th of it.
Today, watching Americans fall prey to the same mistakes as the Soviets makes me wonder what is going to happen as the Chinese further strengthen ties westward and start quietly funding the region. Who will be the hero, then, in helping the oppressed to fight off their evil invaders?