MovieChat Forums > Charlie Wilson's War (2007) Discussion > Partly inaccurate american c**p (spoiler...

Partly inaccurate american c**p (spoilers)

posted 17 years ago by twiceborne-1
39 replies | jump to latest

as a piece of film fine
as an historical record mainy innacuracies...

1. Soviets lost in afghanistan mainly because communism collapsed back home and they lost the will to fight a protracted war. So both the Americans and Fundamentalist Arabs taking credit is an exagerration. The main fighters were afghans and Arabs played very little in the fight against the soviets. So when certain fundy groups (islamic or neo con) take credit for destroying the Russian empire its like taking credit for killing a terminally ill person lol

2. Americans didnt give a flying c**p about the Afghans they just used the fighters in a proxy war against Russia. The film does touch on this , but all that sympathy for Afghan Women and kids is rubbish, America was busy doing the same thing in Latin America at the same time

3. The Fundy backlash wasn't an accident it was well known and even manipulated to serve American interests . America was totally happy with Gulbadeen Hekmatyar and Rabbani etc and didnt care where the weapons ended up. They also fully knew a new enemy was needed after communism collapsed to justify american expansionism..

4. The stinger is an American Missile system under licence from Germany and switzerland, so the part about using stockpiled soviet weapons to avoid american help being known was kack for the most part. Also a handful of well paid Soviet spies could find out all the info they need...

5. There is nothing that can't be bought in Pakistan / Afghanistan so an aging 6 foot Arab running an illusionary terrorist organisation and avoiding capture is pure fantasy

okay just to go a bit deeper (Spoilers)

for the non Muslims out there

1. The Adhan or Islamic call to prayer is not constantly on in the background it happens 5 times a day and also people dont randomly pray just off camera, most go to a mosque at an allocated time. Even in refugee camps...

2. The pakistani Army is secular and big whisky swiggers in fact Murry in Pakistan has one of the biggest breweries in the region and alcohol is freely available in army and rich circles...

3. Pakistanis who for most part are of the Hanafi Madhab (method) of Islam do not put their hands on their heart after greeting, they hug from one side like Chechens, Turks etc

4. The crowds do not shout Allah u Akbar when an American official gives a speech, unless someone (Muslim) shouts Takbir first

5. Western women do not have to cover unless up in the north west frontier but even then only in some regions. Plenty of Pakistani women do not cover or observe Hijab

6. Pakistani / Afghan women do not make the apache type warbling with their tongues this is an Arab thing

7. General Zia ul Haq did not look like Om Puri he looked like Terry Thomas

8. Finally Tom Hanks does not have such a firm butt...however I could be wrong

[–] Eli_Zardo 17 years ago

1) The Afghan war was a tremendous strain on a weakened economy and they 'lost the will to fight' because they were losing. Also the 'credit' for breaking up the Soviets is not solely linked to the Afghan war.

2) The sympathy wasn't rubbish but it surely wasn't the motivating factor overall. Latin America is a different issue.

3) Conspiracy theory.

4) Nobody cared if the Soviets knew it was the U.S., only that the weapons couldn't be proven to be coming from the U.S.

5) Just plain false and a conspiracy theory to boot.

[–] twiceborne-1 17 years ago

typical american response. no factual refutations just a simple two words conspiracy theory lol. And we are all supposed to bow down and accept what you say because you know it all right?

[–] Eli_Zardo 17 years ago

typical american response. no factual refutations just a simple two words conspiracy theory lol. And we are all supposed to bow down and accept what you say because you know it all right?

I've already put my time in dealing with all the asinine conspiracy garbage, I'm done picking them apart. You want to believe that crazy sh_t be my guest.

Just don't expect people to not point out what it actually is.

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[–] twiceborne-1 17 years ago

wow Vlad the Impaler ! maybe the Bastard love child of both now thats a real conspiracy...by the way.. most Americans are lovely decent people who if they knew what was really going on would be the biggest enemies of the stuff done in their names..

[–] emulove1 17 years ago

>>most Americans are lovely decent people
lol "decent people", as long as your standards of lovely and decent arent extremely low there is hardly any nation in the world for which would deserve such a statement, and america is really one of the very very last ones for which this would be true

basicly americans are as good or bad as people anywhere else, but they live in a system which gets the worse out of them, a system which like hardly any other suggests and promotes self-indulgence, egoism and hypocrisy

most americans willingly turn a blind eye, their policy towards the bad done in their name is dont ask dont tell! if we dont know for sure we are not to blame, so we dont look into it, america is a militaristic fascist nation and it takes not an hour recherche to see that things are really *beep* up, but this amount of political work is already too much, they rather watch mainstream propaganda eight hours a day

and anyway: defending or declaring solidarity with a hundred million people is pointless

[–] Ohiowatha 16 years ago

you talk so much, yet say so little.

[–] nbjeff 17 years ago

I'm nowhere near as cynical as emulove, and I do appreciate your gesture of good will, but as a jaded idealist, I will agree with emulove that many Americans (like people elsewhere) encourage their leaders to feed them the bulls*** they want to hear. For example, although the Bush-Cheney administration did mislead the people into war, it is equally true that Congress and the for-profit media were terrified of public opinion post-9/11. Grief, hysteria and a thirst for revenge turned democracy very nearly into a ochlocracy.

The fact that ostensibly liberal Americans like Aaron Sorkin, Mike Nichols, billionaire Jeff Skoll and, if I'm not mistaken, Tom Hanks, could proudly associate themselves with the self-congratulatory, adventurist, white-man's-burden c**p that is CWW, shows how *beep* up we really are.

I happen to like people and get along well with them on an individual basis, but speaking in broad philosophical terms, well, I tend to think that not just Americans, but everyone, sucks. Everyone just doesn't have the power and wealth we have. If they did, they would be just as insufferable.

[–] emulove1 17 years ago

very well put, ochlocracy pretty much describes it, though i wouldnt say that it was a real working democracy before that either, the american voting system is really a farce (just look at the present campaigns), and bush was elected before 9/11, watch his pre-election interviews, no half way intelligent person could have had any doubt on who he was and what he was going to do, he was hardly (capable of) making a secret out of it, in a way he really was a very democratic president ^^

I tend to think that not just Americans, but everyone, sucks. Everyone just doesn't have the power and wealth we have. If they did, they would be just as insufferable.

yeah, and the more powerful western nations like france and britain are in terms of foreign intervention (and for britian also domestic policy) not much less insufferable, germany may be the exception due to historical circumstances but i fear this effect might be about to wear off, still america has a particular difficult foundation, a combination of religious, ideological and political problems – strong militarism almost from the beginning, puritan/calvinist “ethics”, traditional hypocrisy (land of the free...slave-owners) (there is also one line in the movie about this), enlightenment mysticism (covert antidemocratic knowledge cults, lodges..), nationalism aso. and the interconnection of all these and unlike the european countries it hardly ever had to challenge any of these points

maybe its also a question of critical mass, very large homogenous countries are always difficult, especially if they are centralised like the usa has become, today the most peaceful, prosperous, free and intact democracies are the small ones, scandinavia, netherlands, switzerland, ireland aso.

[–] nbjeff 17 years ago

puritan/calvinist “ethics”

We're on the same wavelength, emulove. I do agree that our Puritan-derived redemptive messianism makes us insufferable in a peculiarly American sort of way. Sometimes, however, it's used for good. But not often enough.

[–] Big333223 17 years ago

as a piece of film fine
as an historical record mainy innacuracies...

You'll find (as I have) that any film that is "based on a true story" is only that. Based. You can't take movies as fact 99% of the time, even if it says it's a true story.

- Don't tease me about my hobbies, I don't tease you about being an assh*le

[–] emulove1 17 years ago

that our Puritan-derived redemptive messianism makes us insufferable in a peculiarly American sort of way. Sometimes, however, it's used for good. But not often enough.

well yes, though i wouldnt single this out, its the interconnection, and determinism is the bigger problem, it suggests simple dualities: chosen or doomed, with us , against us, winner, loser, republican, democrat, black, white aso., it makes way for simplified politics, antidemocratic elitism, social darwinism aso., its interconnected! also consider that the country was not founded by christians but deists and mysticists..

[–] jwiles1 17 years ago

well yes, though i wouldnt single this out, its the interconnection, and determinism is the bigger problem, it suggests simple dualities: chosen or doomed, with us , against us, winner, loser, republican, democrat, black, white aso., it makes way for simplified politics, antidemocratic elitism, social darwinism aso., its interconnected! also consider that the country was not founded by christians but deists and mysticists..

You watched Dazed and Confused a few to many times.

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[–] nbjeff 17 years ago

Not just inaccuracies. Big omissions as well.

For example, according to CIA analyst Vince Cannistraro, "Charlie was an agent for Oerlikan and reputedly received a kickback on the sale."

Notwithstanding any love of the underdog Charlie might have had, he was crooked to the core. We don't get to glimpse any of that in the movie.

Wilson's ties to the Pak military go back to the late fifties. I continue to be very intrigued by his ties to them, as well as his association with US military intel back in 1960.

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[–] rosiecadaverdog 16 years ago

No need for a thesis. The U.S. is made up of 300 million, ethnically diverse people defined by an array of religious and ideological beliefs. The nation has the largest system of higher education in the world. People from all countries come to the U.S. to study. The U.S. is in the process of mapping mars and exploring the outer edges of the solar system. When you hear europeans and canadians denigrate americans, it helps to understand the compensatory motive. American culture is an irresistable juggernaut that overwhelms anything that it comes into contact with. This angers them so when an opportunity presents, they're compelled to label Americans as fat, unsophisticated, jingoistic, provincial, superficial, mono-linguals obsessed with fast food and low-brow entertainment. If you notice, they rarely identify their own nationality because they know they're just as easy to stereotype.

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[–] erikriveros 16 years ago

twiceborn, i'm not sure if you're being silly or not, but i'll assume you're being serious

first, thanks for informing us that on occassion (and by on occassion, i mean always) hollywood takes certain liberties with the truth for entertainment value...very important to point that out

thanks for informing us that americans used the afghans for their proxy war, however i missed the part where you inform us that russia did the same EXACT thing to the US in vietnam, and the chinese are STILL happy to fund and arm some not so nice countries in the world - ie, n.korea/iran

your stinger comment is a joke....read up buddy...stingers were used, the russians new that...the difference is that there were FAR fewer stinger tubes (tubes can be found, exploded missiles cannot) in country thank kalashnikovs to worry about being found...same as the vietnamese flying mig-s armed with cutting edge radar and missiles...what, you think the world thought the viet cong built migs and radar in vietnam?

i think we can agree the rest of your posts are sub-moronic as they did not affect anything, most importantly the film, so we'll just move past them

he'd roll over on his mommy, his daddy, his two panty granny and the *beep* king of siam

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[–] erikriveros 14 years ago

nice post nbjeff...rich, informative, compelling....

it is better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it

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[–] Little_Korean 14 years ago

I agree with the OP on the very first point - indeed, I heard the Soviets were doing a competent job of controlling Afghanistan through chosen puppets once they pulled out - but it has been argued that the USSR collapsed largely due to the huge bill from being involved in Afghanistan in the first place.

When darkness overcomes the heart, Lil' Slugger appears...

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