Charlie Wilson’s War
It was a book before it was a movie … and there is supposed to be some basis in fact … so I suppose that means it was real life before it was a book or a movie.
My husband and I saw the movie recently. If the events happened as they are portrayed, then basically three people — a congressman, a CIA desk agent, and a wealthy Texas donor — raised the US contributions to support covert operations against the Soviets in Afghanistan from $5 million to $500 million over a period of no more than two or three years.
Now, I certainly don’t want to get into politics … I’m sure we each have a views … we may agree in some places and disagree in others. I am equally sure that there are many ways to solve problems successfully; I leave the politics to others.
I do want to highlight the notion that just a few people could make such a big difference. I wonder what would happen if each of us decided to make a difference.
On a related note, if you listen, you hear Gust (the CIA operative) tell Charlie that we need to fund education and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan after the war with as much vigor as we did the covert ops. Gust and Charlie try to point out that the Afghan youth would grow up and not realize that the US had helped defeat the Soviet occupation (since it was a covert operation) … so they won’t grow up thinking the US did good things. In fact, they suggest that generation might grow up thinking the US didn’t come to their aid at all.
It’s always easier to make the right decision after the fact. The truth is that we didn’t seem too interested in funding schools and hospitals after we had funded the war. We’ll never know what might have been different … I can hope that we did learn a lesson.
My prayer for each of us today is that we can go out and make a difference …
Blessings, SCW
