(Placed in GD because it might trigger a debate on US foreign policy)
Does the movie get into the unintended consequences of Wilson and the CIA’s support for the Afghan Mujahideen? How, were Russia still in Afghanistan and concentrating the radicals’ attention away from us, 9/11 would probably have not happened?
I ask because it looks like Neocon porn and I have a perfect record of missing Julia Roberts movies and don’t intend to give up now.
The terrorists are fighting the United States now for the same reason they were fighting the Soviet Union then; they don’t want non-Muslim soldiers in Muslim countries.
I saw the 2 hour special on the History Channel about him…quite a character. I have no idea if the movie goes into what the OP is asking (seems a CS question to me), but the History Channel show certainly talked about it. Charlie Wilson is actually still alive (I didn’t know this myself until I watched the show) and he actually had some insights into this him self. He was both proud of what he had done (according to the show he pretty much single handedly got the weapons the Afghani’s needed to defeat the Russians), loved the Afghani people and their struggle…but was troubled and hurt by what happened after. He was especially critical about how the US and Europe (and everyone else) had pretty much abandoned the Afghan people after the Soviet pull out…as if once the Soviets were defeated everything would be fine.
-XT
Dunno if this is true. Islamic fighters are still fighting Russia in Chechnya, and yet still seem to find the time to blow up the WTC. They are apparently capable of multi-tasking. And a world in which Russia was still in Afganistan would probably involve more US troops in Muslim countries (pre 9/11 anyways, we seem to have plenty there now) as well, so if anything, they’d have even more reason to attack us.
Trying to draw a straight line between the CIA giving the Mujahadeen Stinger missiles and a terrorist attack 20 years later is a pretty big stretch. I know it’s a popular claim in some circles, but there’s really no evidence for it. Consider these possibilities, among many:
The Mujadadeen still win the war, but lack of U.S. support makes them hate America even more.
The failure to win the war radicalizes the muslim population even more and makes the problem even worse today.
The Russians stay in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union survives for another decade, and starts to collapse when someone like Putin is in power, with the result that there is no ‘soft landing’ but instead a violent spastic collapse. Possibly even nuclear war.
The cold war continues for another decade, there is no ‘peace dividend’, and today the U.S. is 5 trillion dollars poorer.
etc. The whole point to ‘the law of unintended consequences’ is that the future is impossible to predict. That means it’s impossible to predict what would have happened had an historical event not happened. What if Hitler had been killed by the Reichstag bombing? Would the world be a better place? Who the hell knows? Maybe the Soviet Union would have become even more powerful and we would have all destroyed ourselves.
So to claim that 9/11 was the direct result of the U.S. helping the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan is ridiculous.
Not sure what we would have done otherwise though. Don’t know the history very well, but I don’t think there were any great groups to support, it was either warlords, islamists or the communist central gov’t. Some of them were allies of convienience against the Soviets, but I don’t really blame the US for not wanting to continue aid to them after the common enemy had left.
It could’ve been, but I knew there would be a debate to come out of it, and not one about whether or not I have wasted my life by avoiding Julia Roberts movies. 
And I agree with both Wilson’s belief that the West screwed the Afghanis and Malodorous’s point about the lousy choices we had. AND with Sam’s list of alternative outcomes. Real glad I don’t have to make these decisions.
And Sam, it appears I didn’t give myself my normal amount of wiggle room when I used “probably” instead of “might not.”
Maybe not a straight line, but war in Afghanistan between the Mujahadeen and the Soviet puppet government certainly inspired Osama bin Laden to join the jihad. Which eventually led to the creation of al Qaeda. Which led to terrorist attacks.
How much of a part stinger missiles supplied (or not) by the CIA would play into it is certainly not knowable. Maybe if we don’t supply the Afghanis with missiles and other weapons then bin Laden dies. Or they don’t figure out how to use RPGs to attack Blackhawk helicopters. Or how to devise IEDs. I think it’s fair to say that current Islamic militantism was inspired by the success of the resistance there, but it’s not fair to say that the WTC bombings are directly attributable to Charlie Wilson, Ronald Reagan or Ollie North.
But without that success you are saying that current Islamic militantism would be less inspired and that CIA support helped them be successful so, though they shouldn’t be hung for traitors, wouldn’t Wilson, Reagan, and North bear SOME responsibility for what has happened since?
I think the main message of the movie is that intervention in Afghanistan was a good thing when we credit a democratic congressman for it, and a bad thing when its associated with Reagan.
As far as it goes, Bin Laden wasn’t considered a real pal of a good recipient of weapons, and at the time no one imagined a loose coalition of idiot Saudi and Arab fanatics would take over from the native Afgani people. The Muhahadin was a lot more than Bin Laden.
Yes, having watched the movie, one can be left with that impression although the movie itself is careful to end right at the part where the US fails to fund schools for Afghanistan even though half the population is under the age of 14, radicals are streaming in, and the credit for ‘saving’ Afghanistan can be expected to not be ascribed to the US by the new generation there so a blown chance in not following up with the endgame of schools and subsequent support to keep them on our side.
The movie doesn’t assert anything specific about leading to 9/11 though.
Ah, but they didn’t. The Taliban were quite native, indeed overwhelmingly Pushtun ( part of the problem in some estimations, as their brand of xenophobic parochialism took on a distinctly pushtunwali tinge ). ObL’s mostly foreign legion were allied and sheltered, but the Taliban government was pretty much just as native as the current one.
After the Soviet Union left there was a protracted period of civil war involving the former soviet backed regime and the jihadists. There was no opening for the USA to “fund schools”, as if the US, acting alone and without being invited by the Afghan government, was under any obligation to do so.
Since the US, with the help of its Northern Alliance allies succeeded in kicking out Mullah Omar and and his Taliban the US has provided considerable aid to Afghanistan.
From a January 2007 article MSNBC
and:
It’s not for me to say whether or not the USA was under any “obligation” to do so, and I didn’t say they were. I’m just reporting that there was apparently a proposal by Charlie Wilson to the Congress to fund schools in Afghanistan for one million dollars. And that proposal was shot down. So apparently he thought there was an opening. And further, that perhaps the civil war could have been averted as a result or at least help to de-radicalize a future generation of Afghans.
As for obligations, I think that’s an open question but regardless of whether or not you think there was an obligation Wilson apparently thought it was just smart and in our own best interests to follow up that way rather than just ‘abandoning’ them.
So were Wilson’s views, apparently, at least how they were presented in film.
As for US aid to Afghanistan NOW, what’s your point? That the US learned its lesson from screwing up in not doing so last time and now is doing the right thing?
If so, good I guess. I wouldn’t be surprised at future unintended consequences in terms of how that money is being spent. I read an article recently in the Atlantic about how much of that money is spent for stimulating entrepreneurship, for example. Apparently, it’s very poorly executed and mostly enriching bureaucrats.
No surprise there.
He was right all the way down the line.
Okay, Wilson’s statement I have no problem agreeing with. I’d agree with others here that NOT fucking up the endgame was difficult then, but I suspect he’d agree we still stand an embarassingly good chance of fucking it royally the second time when we, to mix games if not metaphors, held most of the cards.
I’m still waiting on my share of the "peace dividend’. Where do I apply?
Surprisingly, I agree with the latter statement, at least in broad strokes. However, it was the policy of the United States to foster Islamic resentment and resistance to the Soviet-back regime (a policy, by the way, that started under Carter’s administration, at the insistance of then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, so this can hardly be claimed as either Charlie Wilson’s or Reagan’s invention) which then led to post-Soviet civil war and strife between various factions and ended up with Taliban control of the Afghan state.
We may not be able to predict the results of surreptitious intervention in the affairs of other nations, but whenever we have done so the results have almost always come out badly, if not for us than for the intended recipient. In the case of Afghanistan (which was, admittedly, one of the major events that brought the creaking engine of the Soviet Empire to a grinding halt) one could argue an ethical case for such involvement, and Soviet attrocities certainly highlighted the injustice of that regime (though I daresay that the U.S. scarcely comes off looking better in its involvement in the conflicts in Southeast Asia); the major blame comes in with the lack of support, covert or open, or indeed even international interest for a moderate or liberal regime in Afghanistan and central Asia, leaving the fundamentalists to take over. This is, however, just a small part of the larger neglect for the released satellite states of the East Bloc in Asia and Eastern Europe. Once we “won” the Cold War, we turned insular, and as the Iron Curtain rusted into oblivion, the resultant lack of support, investment, and the brain drain of scientists, doctors, and professionals fleeing to the West resulted in severe problems in the former Soviet-controlled states.
As for the movie, I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to, but I’d be disinclined to take anything away from it as veritable truth. It’s Hollywood’s rendition of history which generally has only a passing and superficial relationship to reality.
Stranger
You may wish to read the book. It’s been a few years so I don’t remember if they discuss current events or anything. But I’m sure it’s a more comprehensive view on Charlie Wilsons life and the events leading up to his involvement in Afghanistan.
And it would relieve me of having to see a Julia Roberts movie. Or a Tom Hanks movie, since I never thought he could act.