Charlie Wilson's War

shottie -
Come on. If you're going to misinterpret, do it with style.
I was just concerned that an adventure that ended so badly was going to be burlesqued to death. I am told it was not.

 

No, it wasn't.

 

OK, now to the real point.
Julia Roberts -- actual acting or mailing it in for the check?
Discuss.

 

Wilson seemed pretty apologetic in the documentary, but it was tacked on the back end of a two-hour show.
Unintended consequences should be the name for all American policy. You push one thing down, another pops up.
Personally, I'd rather have Islamofacism or whatever it is called nowadays then a million nuclear warheads pointed at me.
Terrorism is, for the most part, a bump in the road. Much rather have that than another Cold War. Would that be different if I lived in a NYC or DC? I suppose, but I don't know.
And I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on Julia Roberts's acting ability.

 

I'd rather have had someone figure out AT THE TIME that walking away from a heavily armed country populated by people who'd been fighting someone for 6000 years and abandoning them to civil war and the worst crackpot regime in Asian history might not have been a good idea.

 

I think I've trapped myself in a larger fight for the hearts and minds of SportsJournalists.com between Fenian and Ragu, but I digress.
As often is the case, the right thing to do, might be the wrong thing to do if X happens later, but that doesn't make the first thing wrong at the time, because you don't know if X would happen.
Pointing to Wilson's adventure in Afghanistan is easy. Just like it is easy to blame someone other than the Saudis for 9/11. Even though it was a Saudi — bin Laden — who was in charge. Saudi money funded the venture and it was mostly Saudis on the planes.
The net result of the Afghan adventure was that the Cold War ended, Russia fell and the biggest threat to America ended. That's a win.
What has happened since is better than another land war in Europe or nuclear missiles crossing the poles.
The thing I find odd is that with a generation of journalists primed by Watergate, why did this story take so long to see the light?
It wasn't like Wilson was an unknown congressman, he was plenty well-known and surely someone must have noticed his constant overseas junkets.
Not one person bothered to look at why he was going?
Amazing.

 

Sub the name "Ollie North" for Charlie Wilson and imagine the outcry. "Ollie North's War". Charlie was a liberal democrat so he is looked at as a hero of sorts for spending a billon dollars of our money. At the same time Ollie North was conducting his own war which may have been part of reason Charlie's war went undetected.

There is a lot of talk now about the "blowback" from Charlie's war. Much is said blowback can be linked to Bill Clinton taking his eye of Afganistan for 8 years.

 

The blowback came from not helping to pick up the pieces after the Russians retreated from Afghanistan in 1989.

 

Two things coffee, your ant is distracting yet mesmerizing and don't let your facts get in the way of Bill Clinton being wrong about everything.
Everything is Clinton's fault. Even when he tried to bomb bin Laden back to the stone age, Clinton wasn't doing it for the good of the country, he was wagging the dog to make people forget Monica.
And nevermind that Clinton's people told Bush's people that OBL was enemy No. 1 and Bush's people didn't care. Too busy restoring dignity to the White House or some other nonsense.
For the last time, Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. Repeat after me, Saudi Arabia.

 

You forgot the blue font.

Boom, it may interest you to know that the administration of Bush the Elder cut off the flow of aid to that country in December 1991. We no longer had any interests there, you see.

 

true but real foundation of blow back was Bill Clinton choosing not to do anything about the Taliban when the were getting cranked up in the mid 90's.