I found this column by Dr. Jack Wheeler very interesting. Excerpts:
So it was a strange experience for me to see the movie "Charlie Wilson's War," a movie portraying events I participated in, to see how it was both true and not true, magnificent and ludicrous at the same time.
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Not taking anything away from the magnificence, it is also ludicrous.
And not just because I'm not in the movie. After all, I'm the one who explained to him how defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan could win the Cold War, not some socialite in Houston. It's that no one who had a critical role in helping the Afghans or winning the Cold War is in the movie except Charlie, whose sidekicks are a single CIA lone ranger and a blond chick in Texas – not Bill Casey, not Ronald Reagan, no one.
In fact, at the movie's end, a character lauds Charlie as a Democrat for what he has accomplished despite "a Republican president." That's the movie's only reference to Reagan, and it is negative, as if Reagan were a hindrance in Charlie's way. That's an insult to both men, for Charlie had the highest respect for Ronald Reagan.
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The movie is about providing weapons to Afghans fighting the Soviets, yet only one specific Afghan is named in the film, the legendary "Lion of Panjshir," Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Yet the CIA, in fact, provided little or no aid to Massoud for most of the war. The film never mentions who did get most of the CIA aid instead of Massoud: an America-hating Khomeini-loving Islamofascist named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and his "Hezbi" mujahedeen.
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Whenever I came back from Afghanistan throughout the 1980s, along with various people in the Reagan White House, the Pentagon and Congress, I would always brief Charlie. My years of ranting at him about Gulbuddin finally got through to him in early 1987 – because it wasn't just me.
"Why do you and everyone else who's been inside [Afghanistan] tell me one thing, and the same thing, about the Hezbis, while the CIA tells me the opposite?" he mused.
"Because the CIA is lying to you, Charlie," I replied.
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The movie has Charlie demanding the mujahedeen be given anti-aircraft weapons against the Soviet Hind helicopter gunships right from the start. It whiplashes from 1980 to 1987, shows a schematic of the European Milan anti-tank missile, then in the very next scene two Afghans use a U.S. Stinger against a Hind. This is a farce.
How the Afghans got the Stingers that won the war is a fascinating story, never fully told, and can only be abbreviated here. The very condensed version is this:
The massive weapons flow organized by Charlie and the CIA had, by mid-1986, done no good as it was mostly going to Gulbuddin. When I was in Afghanistan in August, the war was over. The Soviets had won; most of the mujahedeen had retreated back to the refugee camps in Pakistan. Soviet Spetsnaz teams were hunting down and killing the mujahedeen who were left.
Ronald Reagan had been well aware of the need for shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles, and in April 1985 signed a classified executive order giving CIA Director Bill Casey the authority to provide the mujahedeen with Stingers. The order was blocked by CIA Deputy Director John McMahon.
McMahon was determined not to let the Afghans get Stingers, and he used every bureaucratic trick in the book in a constant stream of excuses to prevent their delivery, despite demands of Reagan, Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H., Charlie, and many others in Congress such as Don Ritter, R-Pa.
By late 1985, the entire conservative movement was demanding military aid to anti-Soviet freedom fighters, so we decided to make an end run around McMahon. A visit by UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi was arranged to Washington, where he met President Reagan in the Oval Office on Jan. 30, 1986.
Savimbi told Reagan about the coming Soviet-Cuban offensive scheduled at the end of the rainy season in April, that UNITA would be destroyed without Stingers against the Hinds. Reagan gave Savimbi his word that the Stingers would be provided.
The president then called Bill Casey and said he just didn't care what the excuses were anymore. Any reason given by McMahon was to be disregarded. He signed an executive order to that effect on Feb. 18. Two weeks later, McMahon resigned. I was in Angola at UNITA's Jamba headquarters in April when the Stingers arrived. The Soviet-Cuban offensive was stopped, thanks to them.
Now the way was cleared for Stingers to the Afghans.
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It was the Stingers that won the war, just like the movie shows, just as I told Charlie my conclusion after my first travels with the mujahedeen in 1983, "Take the Soviets out of the air, and the Muj will defeat them on the ground."
After the loss of hundreds of Soviet war craft and pilots from late '86 through '88, the Soviets retreated in defeat. Less than nine months after final retreat from Afghanistan on Feb. 15, 1989, the Berlin Wall was down, Eastern Europe liberated and the Cold War won.
It was a victory of many people, chief among them of course being Ronald Reagan, for implementing the entire strategy of the Reagan Doctrine targeting Soviet vulnerabilities. Support for anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, for democracy movements in Eastern Europe, was a critical part of that strategy – but only a part.
And in that part, Charlie Wilson played a critical role. It is silly for the movie to pretend that Charlie did it by himself without Ronald Reagan, and it is sad for the movie to end on a sour note of blame for the Taliban and al-Qaida. To understand how Afghanistan ended up with this twin-infestation, again read "Gulbuddin and the CIA"
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The moral lesson of the movie should be a very sobering one for the Democratic Party. Charlie Wilson was proudly and unashamedly a pro-American, anti-communist Democrat. His heroism should be a deep embarrassment to the party of Pelosi Galore and Lost Harry Reid, the party who apologizes for America's existence and has neither the spine nor will to defend her.
The Democratic Party – indeed, America – needs more Charlie Wilsons. I will always have the greatest respect for what he did for our country, and I will always treasure his friendship.
