Charlie Wilson’s War, the new Mike Nichols film based on George Crile’s book of the same name opened last week to decent reviews and pretty good word of mouth – even in liberal crowds. The story outline is pretty well known by now. Charlie Wilson, an early Blue Dog Democrat — a socially liberal and weapons loving Congressman from south eastern Texas, (east of Houston and Galveston Bay, bordering on the Gulf and Louisiana,) teamed up with go-it-alone CIA case officer, Gust Avrakotos, to get millions of secret US dollars to various anti-Soviet mujahideen eventually leading to the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Afghanistan and setting the stage for the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.

It’s a good film of course, with Nichols directing, witty script by Aaron Sorkin, Tom Hanks playing Charlie Wilson and the chameleon Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Avrakotos. Julia Roberts isn’t bad as Wilson’s goad and top sex object, Born Again Joanne Herring. Plus there are lots of boy toys: helicopters bowing up, Soviet jets blowing up — handsome Russians silenced in mid fear: Boom!; enormous tanks lifting off the ground in flames. More boy toys in Wilson’s nubile staff, including one he refers to as “jail bait.” Sex and firepower! What’s not to be liked?

This depends on what you go to movies for.

The acting or the story. Or to think about what is being sent your way, the set of values the story advances.

Some would argue that the acting is paramount. Without good acting and a good script you cannot have a good movie. If that’s your criteria this is a good movie. Aaron Sorkin’s typically crisp dialog (West Wing on TV, A Few Good Men…) with the witty repartee of the old Cary Grant films flowing like the language we’ve come to expect of these larger than life characters, wishing we were as witty and quick as they are. It doesn’t hurt that some of it comes directly from the real Charlie Wilson’s mouth. When asked why all his congressional aids are beautiful young women his answer was “You can teach ’em to type. You can’t teach ’em to grow tits.”

If the style and the jewels and the hot tubs are all –in some update of Dallas, the long running series about Texas greed and excess – unrelated to anything in our world, then it is a good movie.

The story is not unrelated to us of course. It is about land mines disguised as toys that maim children. It is about stinger missiles that incinerate and atomize in one glorious show. It is about communists dying. It is about international politics of the most gruesome kind. It is about the United States Congress and how its business gets done. All of this is real and contemporary and none of it is pretty. So how do we get to enjoy a “comedy” about all this? I didn’t.

If the story were about a fictional world in Macondo and Charlie Wilson were decked out in white tropicals with epaulets and the fighting done with muzzle loaders and swords I think I could get in on the fun. It isn’t

If it were set in the time of the Third Reich or Pol Pot or Rwanda and the tickling, teasing, snorting, randy players were funneling guns to the bad guys we would not appreciate the good acting and call it a fun film. The story, in its setting, is all. It determines how we interpret what the players are about. Were Cocaine Charlie helping the bad guys we wouldn’t think of him as “our Charlie” as his constitutents called him for 12 terms in Congress. Since he is helping the “good guys” the background and context fades out of site. The story fits the great American myth of idealism and wanting to help others – even if we are a bit clumsy sometimes, the good intentions are there. We can celebrate good time Charlie and wish he had just tied up a few loose ends.

The closing text on the screen, a quote of Charlie Wilson himself, sums it up. “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. Then we fucked up the endgame.”

Is this really what the film intends to say?

Apparently so. In an interchange reported on “The Conservative Voice” Aaron Sorkin is speaking after a screening of the film.

“[An] audience member said, “I believe that one of the main themes of the movie is, that the United States is good at winning wars and then we pull out before the job is done. Is that that right?” Sorkin responded, “Yes, that’s right. That’s a main theme of the movie.” The questioner followed up more hesitantly, “Well, doesn’t that fly in the face of the popular opinion in the country about the Iraq War right now?” Sorkin responded, “Yes, it does.”

But it wasn’t just the End Game that was fucked up. We can only pretend that if we are mesmerized by the tight little story, the witty dialog and the good acting. In fact, the whole game was fucked up.

I don’t know how Crile’s book sets up the central story but the film has Joanne Herring bringing Charlie Wilson to an Afghan refugee camp to discover the brutality of the mines and shrapnel on the children as though the war and the weapons had happened out of the clear blue – as though they were the only refugee camps of the time.

There is no mention, for example, that Charlie Wilson might have known of the maimed and wounded in the Angolan war raging at the time, for which stinger missals were provided to Joseph Savimbi’s UNITA, a precursor to the Afghanistan “success.” There is no mention that Charlie Wilson was a personal friend of Anastasio Somoza and a strong supporter of that Nicaraguan government The maiming of Nicaraguan children by US supplied land mines did not affect Congressman Wilson quite as much as Afghani maiming.

There is no mention in the film that the Soviet invasion took place at the request of the Afghan government. The monarchy had been overthrown in 1973 by a military coup, and a cousin of the king installed as Prime Minister. The communist party, the PDPA, which had grown in strength through the 50s and 60s and had split into two factions in 1967, came under intense repression by the new government and in 1978, following massive demonstrations and the death of high level PDPA leaders, the Prime Minister was executed by the Afghan army and the Secretary General of the PDPA was installed as the Prime Minister. In its first months in office wide ranging land and marriage reforms were put in place, and forcibly carried out, leading to an estimated 27,000 deaths of traditionalist Afghans. Afghanistan was in chaos – brought on by its own government which was deeply in thrall to a super power just across the border. When Soviet help was asked, the military responded, not unlike clients of the US had done, and have done since.

The film does not tell us that months before the invasion, Peace Loving and Born Again Jimmy Carter had begun to send aid to the anti-Marxist, i.e. anti-government, rebels — aid which Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s Security Advisor, predicted with some glee would force the Soviets to invade. Which it did.

So the terror which Charlie Wilson parachutes into was not simply result of the bald faced invasion of a peaceful people by an aggressive super power. It was, to some degree, and with some intentionality, brought on by actions of the US government. Ugly Russians to be sure, but not as crystal clear as presented. Not quite a story of selfless and idealistic American behavior.

The movie does not remind us that the Iranian Revolution had happened in the months before the Russian invasion. The Shah fled in January of 1979. Ayatollah Khomeini returned from Paris to Tehran in February 1979. Carter’s executive order to help the Afghanis provoke the Russian bear was August of 1979 The Soviet invasion began in Christmas Day, 1979. By the time Wilson’s US/Saudi/Israeli/Pakistan gambit was in full play the Iran-Iraq war was in full swing Sept 22 1980 to August 20, 1988.

Though there is a passing reference to it, the film does not make crystal clear that the millions being raised, the distribution of the armaments and the choosing of which group of Afghans would receive help was decided not by the CIA but the Pakistan ISI — which –guess what– had it’s own agenda: the enfeebling of their perennial border nemesis the Pashtuns.

The movie does not tell us –it would have made swell under-the-credits footage — that after the Russians fled and the US sauntered off, the Pakistanis turned and used all the tactics learned in the Afghan war, and many of the training bases as well, to foment guerrilla war in Kashmir against Indian rule there — which has brought the world closer to nuclear war than anything but the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Joanne Herring’s reply to all of this? “No one can predict future wars, or we wouldn’t have them.” Thank you Joanne for your deep thoughts.

Refugee camps and maimed and starving civilians seem to have been fixtures in our lives since Napoleon democratized the armed forces and the opportunities for suffering. For Charlie Wilson and Doc Long, Chair of the subcommittee on Foreign Operations of the House Appropriations Committee, it was as if they had never heard or seen such a thing. For those of us who have lived with images of starving kids and desperate parents as the background screen of our lives it was stupefying to watch these two men get religion, as it were. Though the religion was not to succor and relieve but to see in an ecstasy that these people want to kill Russians! Joanne Herring is more duplicitous than her consort it seems. Her Born Again status, and affiliation with the Minute Men of America make her see clearly that it is not about the armless kids but about what emotions the kids will raise in those who can provide the money and the guns. No mention anywhere that her fabulous wealth brought a child back for surgery, or for adoption, or a a family for a new life. Heck, why deprive the Russian haters of another fighter?

Of the things the film does show us, besides the naked and the perky, there is plenty we would rather not see, or more precisely would wish not to be true.

My god! Is this how US foreign policy is really run? Just like the sausage factory?

A Jesus obsessed grand dame of south eastern Texas (whose Born Againness doesn’t prevent her from bonoboing those near and dear) can trade sexual favors and private jets to get her Congressman boyfriend to trade dubious congressional favors [Jack Murtha, our favorite Out of Iraqer, was in ethics problems even then] to spirit out millions of dollars to be slushed into Pakistani hands who then distribute the dollars — taking a little cut for their trouble– to certain Afghans sick and tired of exploiters, Afghans who even then were as anti-American as they were anti-Soviet. A rogue CIA operative in good old Hollywood “Dirty Harry” style creates on-the-ground de facto foreign policy — and this is “glorious?” This is is not to be thought of as “fucked” in the same sense as the “end-game” is fucked? Why not just give up now and let all the Dirty Harrys of the world serially decapitate each other guided by their deep, innate sense of what is “right,” a sense not shared by the rest of us, idiots, and never never known by anyone elected to government.

This theme of the righteous lawbreaker saving the sheep from the danger of idiots who believe in the rule of law is such a trope in Hollywood film making I have to believe there is a collectively participated in projection of hyper-aggressive writers, directors and producers onto the super masculanized world of those men who can really do us damage, not just offer up fantasies. But that would be an essay for another day.

Lots of reviews have played up the pacing, the script, the fun, the humor, the characters. And so it is, it seems to me, its own piece of poison wrapped up as a toy, attractive to adults. Like a film with crinolines and saucy behavior to tell a story about rescuing those brutalized in the sex trade…. Heck, it looks like fun to me! A comic right wing film. If you don’t believe me, you could go read some of them – who seem to like it for all the reasons I don’t.

The notorious Max Boot loves it: “…you’ve got to love a movie in which the Soviets are the bad guys and we’re the good guys, a movie in which the main characters talk unapologetically about how much they love killing Russians. How many other pro-American Cold War pictures has Hollywood made?”

Dr. Jack Wheeler, who claims he was the conceptual brain behind the Reagan Doctrine [via Dana Rohrabacher his then speech writer] of attacking the Soviet Union on the peripheries including Angola [he was a big supporter of UNITA and helped get stinger missiles to them] and Afghanistan loves the movie.

Over at The Conservative Voice it is thought that Charlie Wilson’s War is “the first big budget, studio film to place our current military actions in a positive light in a long time.”

And ProteinWisdom thinks its fine film and beats back any suggestion that the Taliban came out of it, and praises Reagan for being so prescient about the need for stingers everywhere…

I don’t know about you, but I could take my war comedies without the maimed kids or the selective sympathies of those who want to use poster child images to inflict incalculable and ill-thought out harm to others. The list the CIA weapons expert comes up with to give the “muj”, right off the top of his head, includes land mines and bicycle bombs. Thanks. And they couldn’t predict what would happen?

Wilson himself seems to have some after thoughts, some worries that his lovely stingers will are now being turned on American pilots — though still not about the wisdom of his enterprise. He understands that September 11, 2001 came out of his enterprise in some fashion but he shrugs: We were fighting the Evil Empire.

The film is relatively short — and praised for being so, in keeping with the general comedy-of-manners appreciation many have taken of it. I wouldn’t have minded another twenty minutes or so roughing out some of the details I’ve listed above. I wouldn’t have minded being reminded, along with Wilson’s quote, that the Bhutto murdered (or not) by Herring’s pal Zia ul-Haq, President of Pakistan, was the father of the Benazir Bhutto so lately in the news. I wouldn’t have minded knowing that Zia ul-Haq is responsible for the Pakistan nuclear program and thus the proliferation of nuclear materials around the world. I wouldn’t have minded a sentence telling us that Zia ul-Haq and the US Ambassador to Pakistan died together in 1988 in a mysterious airplane crash a few months after the Soviet withdrawal had started.

I am also enormously curious about rogue Gust Avrakotos and his Greek background. He was born in 1938 in the US to Greek immigrant parents. The Greek Civil war following the withdrawal of the Germans from Greece was going full force by the late 1940s: communist against nationalist. Neighbor killed neighbor. Families separated. Folks went hungry, too terrified to go out in the streets. Avrakotos and his parents must have been aware of this and must have had a position — it not being in the Greek makeup not to have strong positions. I wonder if Avrakotos’ strong anti-communism came from his familial feelings? And again, is this anyway to create a foreign policy?

Molly Ivins before her death praised Crile’s book and writing. He himself is a 60 Minutes Producer. Looks like I might have to read the book itself, if only to settle my questions about background and foreground and what is it the author has understood and wants us to understand with him. I hope it’s not just more of “saved by the rule-breakers!”, that for all the cloak and dagger story line, and libidinous conservatism, which Molly must have loved, there are riches of understanding not evident in the film.

If you want to read more about the Ghost Wars of the CIA and the whirlwind we are reaping try Ghost Wars: How Reagan Armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan by Steve Coll. Here’s an Amy Goodman interview of a couple of years ago.

Update: Chalmers Johnson on TomDispatch dislikes it, as I do.

My own view is that if Charlie Wilson’s War is a comedy, it’s the kind that goes over well with a roomful of louts in a college fraternity house. Simply put, it is imperialist propaganda and the tragedy is that four-and-a-half years after we invaded Iraq and destroyed it, such dangerously misleading nonsense is still being offered to a gullible public. The most accurate review so far is James Rocchi’s summing-up for Cinematical: “Charlie Wilson’s War isn’t just bad history; it feels even more malign, like a conscious attempt to induce amnesia.”