Two weeks ago in a discussion with my Lion friends the subject of Charley Wilson’s War came up. I remembered seeing a movie by that name, but could not remember what it was about. Two days later my friend Rod dropped off a book with the same title. I finished reading the story today, and feel compelled to express myself about it. Before I do I have to say that the reason I couldn’t remember what the story was about from watching the movie is because the story is way too big to cover in a two hour movie. The producers chose to concentrate on Charley’s womanizing and his relationship with a specific CIA agent named Gust Avrakotos. Both Wilson’s womanizing and Gust’s CIA association are major parts of the story, but their involvement in driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan and the eventual downfall of the USSR was complicated and confusing in the film.
Here is my opinion. All presidents from George Bush the second and every president after him should read this piece of history. Had Bush absorbed the message of Jihad played out in the story he would have thought three times before declaring war on Afghanistan. In Obama’s case it is worse. He is a muslim sympathizer yet he fails to recognize the drive and fervor of jihad. His foreign policy regarding muslim nations would have to be different if he understood the message of this book.
The Russians spent billions under the guise of liberating Afghanistan, but they really wanted to own Afghanistan and to open a path to the Indian Ocean. They lost 28,000 young men, and their engagement is compared to our Viet Nam. They killed over a million muslim jihadists, and they might have won had the CIA not gotten involved.
What was the message I got? That muslims on a jihad are crazy zealots for revenge and for driving infidels from their countries. Almost as soon as the door hit the last Russian in the ass as he left Afghanistan, the mujahideen shifted to the USA as their new enemy. It hasn’t stopped since then, and we all know that things are not getting better.
This book is an interesting and enjoyable read. The history covered is relatively obscure because the USA, namely the CIA kept it so covert that neither the Afghans or the Russians knew we were involved.
The second thing I got from the book is that a single Congressman with abilities similar to those of Charles Wilson who wanted revenge for the Russian involvement in Viet Nam against us could appropriate so much money for a program that was never approved by Congress, or the President. In my opinion Charley Wilson was a hero for bringing down the Russians, but he should be in jail for how he went about doing it. The reason he never went to jail is that he had too many other Congressmen in his pocket.
In retrospect, what Charley Wilson did amounts to peanuts compared to what Obama does daily in the name of redistributing wealth.
Filed under: Book Review, Conservative, Government, Movie Review, politics | Tagged: Afghanistan, Charley Wilson, CIA, Gust Avrakotas, Russian War |
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