Wilson’s War reviewed

 

Thursday, May 27, 2010

 

            I saw Charlie Wilson’s War for the first time last night – but with great reluctance.

            As a wayward socialist, I have long hated the CIA’s endless war, and from the title and trailers of the film, I got the impression Wilson’s War was a glorification of the CIA in much the way the old James Bond films (partially financed by the CIA) were.

            Julia Roberts also played a character I particularly disliked, a hypocritical Born Again Extreme Right Wing Jesus Freak whose whole aim is to foist her god onto the backs of other people, often at the expense of what I consider the much kinder and more gentile religion socialism.

            So as the film unfolded I became more and more enraged. Not at Tom Hanks, but at the apparent propaganda I thought I saw before me – such as any Chuck Norris film or that real piece of crap from the 1980s, Red Storm Rising.

            So I paused the DVD, went over to my computer, twittered Hanks at his movie set and said, “Love you, hate Wilson, hope your new film has a character I can respect.”

            Never was I so wrong – a problem I have with impulse control.

            Prejudiced against the film before I saw it, I made rash judgments during the development and had I waited, I might have discovered the error of my ways – as I eventually did.

            Wilson is a better liberal than I am because he tolerates the ultra right wing when I cannot. Someone mentions what a hero Ronald Reagan was and I puke. I don’t go near George W Bush and his satanic vice president without taking a heavy doze of tranquilizers and garbing myself in a full hazmat suit.

            The Hoffman character, however, intrigued me even -- if he was a CIA guy – simply because he was willing to tell his boss to fuck off, and though the film showed too little of him, Hoffman’s appearances more than highlighted the insanity going on in the CIA, then and most likely now, where a pack of cowards allow other people to suffer while they sit back and count their victories.

            The concept of Wilson’s War is simple: Wilson is a fun-loving Congressman, who sits on two important committees, and he is puzzled why America is not properly funding the anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan. When he asks about the funding, he finds that the CIA is only giving the rebels $5 million. He tells his aide to double it.

            This attracts the attention of the hypocritical Jesus Freak in Texas – his part time lover – who says he needs to do more to fight the evil Soviets, and sends him on a fact finding mission to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

            Leaders in Pakistan laughed at Wilson’s petty effort at giving more money to the rebels, suggesting that it was far too little. They suggest he go to the front to look at the refugees, which he does, and after seeing the men, women and children brutalized, maimed and raped by Soviet soldiers, Wilson returns to America determined to do something about it – even while he is under investigation for his whoring and drug using ways by that other Blackheart of Right Wing Extremism, Rudy Giuliani.

            Using his clout and his contacts, and of course, the Hoffman character, Wilson manages to up the funding, getting matching funds from Saudi Arabia, so that by the end of the war, the rebels are receiving more than $1 billion. He also managed to cover the CIA’s ass by forging agreements with Israel and several Arab states to supply Soviet weapons so as to keep the CIA’s secret war secret.

            Wilson’s concept was simple: give the rebels the weapons to shoot the helicopters out of the sky and the Soviets will lose, and this is what happened.

            While Reagan is credited with winning the cold war, this film suggests Wilson – a liberal – is the one who actually delivered the master stroke that brought down Reagan’s so-called “Evil Empire.”

            Wilson’s War still has its propagandistic elements – such as depicting Soviet soldiers as unbearably ruthless, and perhaps they were. But atrocities occur in every conflict by every side, as the madness of war escalates. Snap shots of American behavior in Vietnam and even contemporary Iraq might easily paint us in a similar light.

            But this said, the Soviets seemed particularly aggressive, often sabotaging children’s toys, killing pregnant women, and deliberately creating wounded in order to break the spirit of the Afghanistan resistance.

            Had Wilson’s War ended on the high note of the Soviet withdrawal, I might have remained a skeptic, but the film goes on, showing Wilson’s fruitless efforts to get American funds sent to rebuild the country after the water. While the $5 million originally dedicated to supplying the Afghan rebels with weapons at the beginning of the film seem totally inadequate, the $1 million Wilson sought to rebuild schools was seen as way too much.

            The Hoffman character pointed out near the end that good things may become bad things and bad things become good, if you wait long enough.

            With the majority of the Afghan population under the age of 14 by the end of the war, the stage was set for new problems. The CIA abandoned Afghanistan – just as it historically abandoned all its tools after getting what it wants – and these kids went wild, armed to the teeth with US and Soviet supplied weapons, they became the drug lords of the world, making America’s wild west seem tame. To control them and to bring peace to the country, a new force rose up in Afghanistan called the Taliban, and this new society was anti-American, providing training camps for terrorists – some of whom attacked America on 9/11.

            Wilson, commenting at the end of the film, said we fucked things up, and we did.

            Needless to say, I went back to Hanks on Twitter and said, “I saw the film again and decided I liked the guy after all.”