Charlie Wilson's War

Another movie about Afghanistan. Charlie Wilson, it seems, was a Texas congressman, that was on some pretty powerful committees during the eighties, and was involved in our cold war struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

This movie was kind of interesting and I learned some things about the cold war. One thing was the need to supply weapons to people that would appear as if they were captured from the Soviets. If we were so blatant and just gave the Mujahadeen American weapons, it would just be open war against the Soviets, but by supplying only Soviet made weapons, or Soviet knock-offs, we hide our involvement.

I did not like the way this movie rubs the Soviets' noses in what happened in Afghanistan. There are still Russians that are alive and in power that may have been negatively affected by Afghanistan, but gleefully rubbing their noses in it with this movie, we are engendering their anger. Reminding them of the past. The last thing we need is a bunch of Russians running around hating us.

The movie did attempt to show that Wilson wanted to rebuild Afghanistan, which may have ended up avoiding the World Trade Center being destroyed. Unfortunately we did not do that. We rebuilt Europe and Japan after WWII, but did not see fit to rebuild Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out. Big mistake.