Charlie Wilson's War

some thoughts after reading some posts...

As to Carter's supposed "neutering" of the CIA... first of all, Senator Frank Church conducted hearings about the abuses of the CIA. This included political assassinations and actions without knowledge and approval of Congress. This included support for repressive right-wing regimes under the justification of fighting Communism. Maybe the ends would justify the means from the US point of view, but that isn't going to promote freedom for everyday people in South American countries. If you were in South America or Central America and were a working-class person, starvation and lack of freedom because of a right-wing dictatorship isn't a heckuva lot different that starving and lack of freedom because of a Communist dictator. The CIA wasn't real popular in South America. Church, more than Carter, was responsible for curbing some of the abuses.

 

As for Oliver North, what he did was to be an agent to make foreign policy in direct opposition to the law passed by Congress. In Nicaragua, the Contras were thugs fighting against some government thugs, the Sandanistas. The justification was that the Nicaragua was a puppet state of the Soviets and the Cubans. No question they received support from Communist governments, but the Sandanistas weren't as brutal as the right-wing thugs in El Salvador. Indeed, the Sandanistas lost power in an election in 1990, so they didn't or couldn't use the military force to keep power.

Oliver North was condemned for what can be summed up in three words, "misappropriation of funds". He took funds approved for one purpose, arranged for a trade of arms to Iran (not exactly friends) and used funds for the Contras. He also used funds to put a security system in his house in Virginia. If you steal money for what you believe is a noble purpose, it is still stealing government money. If you allow that, you can allow someone like Oliver North skimming some of the money and keeping it for himself.

 

I'm reading the book right now and plan on seeing the movie as soon as I can. Based on what I've read so far I'd like to know more about the woman she is portraying. Sounds like an interesting lady.

 

Charlie Wilson pretty much did the same thing but on a much grander and clandestine scale.

 

Two situations were very different.
There was pretty much a unified consensus that what the Soviets did in Afghanastan was wrong. The Afghans showed a willingness to fight the Soviets even though they didn't have weapons. In an interview, Charlie Wilson said that was one of the things which made an impression on him and led him to try to get them better weapons.

The Contras, by contrast, had the reputation of being a 9-to-5 army and didn't even have a lot of support from political groups opposed to the Sandanistas.

Look at the results. The Afghans pretty much brought down the Soviet Union - the Soviet economy was also a big factor but don't underestimate the emotional effect of the Soviet's failed war. The contras never accomplished anything.

 

Boom --
He also sold missiles to the people who'd sponsored the killing of 240-odd of his fellow Marines. He also sold out Reagan at his criminal trial. Don't recall Charlie doing anything like either of those. Granted, Charlie's enterprise was as far off the booksas you could get, but it doesn't rise to selling missiles to the Ayatollah.
Ragu once again believes that if he says the same thing he's said before, but says it very slowly, it will become true. As Gold pointed out, the Church commission and the Carter years pissed off the CIA because they revealed to the country stuff our bungling spooks were doing that were ILLEGAL AT THE TIME, and therefore, they couldn't do them any more. As far as I know, the Congress -- and no president -- has never made CIA practices retroactively illegal. (Often, it goes quite the other way, with CIA criminality being immunized after the fact, or covered up entirely.) If the CIA broke the law, then the CIA broke the law. Ineffectual? Yes, but they were always that. Boy scouts? Hardly. I know that's the after-action spin by people like Avrokatos, and CIA officials who still can't explain how the USR collapsed without their knowing, or how Aldrich Ames sold everything but the office copiers to the Russians before they caught him. Doesn;t make it true, though.

 

Charlie Wilson may have very well sold missiles to folks who brought down the Towers. Everyone was so focused on Iran /Contra they lost track of what ole Charlie was doing.

 

Boom: We fought with the Soviet Union in WW2, and then we fought a cold war against them for the next 45 years. We support Saddam Hussain and sell him weapons, then complain that he has these weapons. Such is international politics - ain't no morality, it's just convenience of the moment.

Fens: agree with most of your post, but some blame for not catching Aldrich Ames goes to the FBI because they are responsible for counter intelligence and domestic spies.

 

"FB, Whatever. You asked for proof. I gave examples. If you REALLY believe one of the examples I gave -- planting propaganda in the European press -- needed to be debated by teams of lawyers, thereby tying the hands of the agents trying to get their work done, because of some convoluted reasoning that it could violate the law that says the CIA can't operate on U.S. territory if the propaganda somehow made its way back to the U.S. -- so be it. It's ridiculous to most other people, and is just one example of how the CIA's hands were tied and how scared anyone was to do anything, lest they get accused of something criminal by Congress after the fact. It doesn't require me to speak slowly. And it is exactly what you demanded: an example! You challenge me. You demand proof (of everything, even when it is well-known fact, and stuff easily accessible to anyone with a working knowledge of Google or Nexus--i.e. the MD shortage Canada has brought upon itself, leaving millions of people without a family practitioner which you harped on and used to sidetrack a conversation. You forced me to stamp it on your forehead before we could move on). I give you what you demand, proof, examples, links to articles. And then you act as if I didn't provide it (the "speak slowly" bullshit). Why waste the time responding to you?"

And there is the essence of the Ragu Technique. Assert the same thing, over and over again. Produce no links. Nobody with any expertise to back you up, or even a cite that might be helpful. When challenged, assert it again. When challenged again, assert it a third time and claim Victory! (The Canadian MD shortage? The one JR an other actual Canadians laughed at you about prior to explaining that "unsupportable!" is not an argument? God, talk about walking your old, bloody battlefields.) Let just a smidgen of your true feelings emerge. ("So be it" if CIA black propaganda blows back into the American media and poisons the dialogue that's supposed to help us govern ourselves, and how dare lawyers argue about the law? Talk about your quibbling.) When asked to produce one instance in which Congress made a CIA operation illegal ex post facto, holler about "neutering" the way you hollered about "nanny states!" or whatever the catchphrase du jour was last week. But don't produce one. (Don't feel bad. You can't. Because there isn;t one, and if the CIA people were really concerned about that happening, they were dumber than even I thought they were.) Then, of course, decide that the whole business has grown too savage, clutch your pearls, and retire to the fainting couch with the vapors.

 

Tangent time.

Not only did Charlie Wilson help destroy the Soviet Union, he called congressional hearings in the wake of a newspaper investigation that probably helped the Lufkin (Texas) News win a Pulitzer Prize.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003689256