Charlie Wilson's War

In his provocative 1993 book, Culture and Imperialism, Edward W. Said examines how cultural representations in the West have historically helped to stereotype Third World peoples as being passively reliant on foreign aid for their social and political uplift, thus engendering support for imperial interventions ostensibly undertaken for humanitarian purposes. This was true, he argued, even in works critical of Western interventions, like Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, where the indigenous characters appear to be either incidental to the story or dependent on Westerners—as is exemplified in the Vietnamese character Phuong who latches onto the “quiet American” Alden Pyle as a means of escaping a life of poverty and prostitution. 

Said’s final chapters focus on Hollywood’s promotion of demeaning stereotypes of Arabs as religious fanatics and terrorists as well as oppressive towards women. He highlights how the Vietnamese people in most American films on the war have been deprived of human agency, with the U.S. defeat frequently blamed on ineffectual liberal bureaucrats and incompetent senior officers rather than the strength of Vietnamese nationalism and mobilizing abilities of the revolutionary leadership. 

Said would likely argue that Charlie Wilson’s War is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to promote underlying cultural stereotypes of Third World peoples and Muslims, while sanitizing the U.S. record and its promotion of imperial violence. Based loosely on true events, the film focuses on the efforts of a Congressional representative from Texas, Charlie Wilson, to raise funds for mujahadin “freedom fighters” seeking to “liberate” Afghanistan from the Soviets. A playboy renowned for his womanizing and high-lifestyle, Wilson becomes a lonely voice in support of the CIA’s covert war. He ends up working closely with Gust Avrakatos, a master of the clandestine arts, who uses underhanded methods to funnel supplies through intermediaries in the Pakistani secret service. In the mold of Dirty Harry and Rambo, both Wilson and Avrakatos are portrayed as heroes for circumventing bureaucratic constraints and confronting the Russians—even if it entails making a quid pro quo with the murderous Pakistani dictator Zia Al Huq as well as buying arms from a shadowy Israeli black-marketer. 

While the film is accurate in portraying the ends justifies the means philosophy embraced by the CIA and its alliance with murderous dictators, one major distortion is that the directors portray U.S. policy in Afghanistan as being largely reactive to the Soviet threat and a product of a well-intentioned desire to “save” the Afghan people. This ignores the aggressive policies pursued by Washington throughout the Cold War, its sponsorship of massive state terror in Central America at this time, and its long-standing desire to exploit the Middle-East’s oil supply. It further ignores comments made by Zbigniew Brezezinski, Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter, who told Le Monde in a 1998 interview: “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahadin began during 1980, that is to say after the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guard- ed until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion the aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”  He added: “What is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War? Now we can give the Russians their Vietnam War.” 

Where does the well-being of the Afghan people fit in this grand design? 

The most egregious misrepresentation of the film is in its portrayal of the mujahadin as being inexperienced in the handling of weapons and as idealistic refugees fighting for the salvation of their people. This obscures the fact that the CIA often shunned legitimate nationalists like Abdul Haq in favor of militant Islamic fundamentalists seeking to impose a fascist theocratic state along the lines of the Taliban. Among Washington’s key favorites was Gulbuddin Hikmatyar of the Hizb-Y Islami, who was valued for his hard-line anti-communism in spite of a reputation for abject ruthlessness. Hikmatyar was also a renowned opium smuggler and warlord and was alleged to have sprayed acid in the faces of women who did not wear the veil. One of his colleagues referred to him as “a true monster,” though he allegedly impressed the CIA by wanting to take the war against the Soviets to Central Asia and roll back communism in Kazakhstan, Azerbajaan, and Uzbe- kistan. One CIA officer said, “We wanted to kill as many Russians as we could and Hikmatyar seemed like the guy to do it.” 

Whitewashing these facts and over-sentimentalizing the CIA- mujahadin alliance, the film makes it seem as if they were genuine “liberators” who did not harm any civilians and whose ultimate victory over the Soviets represented a great moral triumph. The producers also imply that the chaos that ensued in Afghanistan after the war resulted from rogue forces taking over the country—ignoring the impact of their training in terrorist methods by the CIA (including specialization in high explosives). The agency of Afghans, moreover, is denied. In one telling scene a group of rag-tag Afghani refugees beg Wilson for weapons and financial aid. After Wilson delivers on his promise through intensive lobbying, the same people are shown struggling to maneuver a stinger missile and finally succeed in destroying a Russian aircraft bombing their village. Within a short time, a huge number of Soviet fighter planes are shot down and the mighty Russian Army is forced to retreat. Wilson’s support, coupled with Avrakatos’ street savvy and guile, appear as the key determining factors shaping this outcome—rather than the ingenuity of the Afghan resistance and will of its people. 

The stereotype of Afghan dependence on the West remains entrenched at the end of the film. The lack of effective governance after the Soviet withdrawal and resultant suffering of the Afghan people is blamed on Congressional unwillingness to carry the crusade further and build hospitals and roads for the country. One Congressperson is quoted as saying, “Who the hell cares about building hospitals or schools in Pakistan?” While this quote may convey where the true priorities of the government lie, there is no implication that the U.S. contributed significantly to the destabilization of the country by helping to induce the original Soviet invasion or later supported the Taliban while seeking to construct an oil pipeline through the country. Neither is there any recognition that indigenous leaders might be able to develop the country independent of Western patronage and support.  

Viewers are left with the image of Afghans as a helpless people whose fate is dependent on political actions in the United States. The message is that Americans should intervene more in foreign countries to alleviate their miseries—notwithstanding the reality that U.S. policy is usually based on underlying geo-hegemonic and economic agendas and frequently contributes to mass human rights violations and suffering, as in Afghanistan and Iraq today. By sanitizing and distorting history, and presenting Western militarism as a force for good, films like Charlie Wilson’s War ultimately help to perpetuate the ideological mindset shaping continued foreign policy blunders and crimes of historic dimensions, which the U.S. public has yet to fully come to terms with. 

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is a visiting assistant professor of history at Bucknell University.