Thursday, December 4, 2008

Charlie Wilson's War

Wow ...

I always knew we bankrolled the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets and this movie just ... as George Tenet said ... slam dunked it. People forget that Osama Bin Laden was our buddy back then and, for that matter, so was Sadaam Hussein, oh fooey, Manuel Noriega was a pal too at one time ... sigh.

Charlie Wilson is quite a character and I think that the Tom Hanks version was mild compared to the real thing. What was so stupid (not the movie, the motive), is that some rich evangelical socialite in Texas was the spearhead of getting money/weapon to the Mujahadeen fighters in the name of defeating "godless" communists, when in fact, we were arming the very people we are now fighting ...

When I went to the Soviet Union in 1990 ... still godless communists .. ha ... I've never seen people so religious in my life. They were literally crawling over each other to say prayers in their Churches, I felt like an intruder.

What we did over there was fight the Soviets so we wouldn't have to fight them here, kind of like what we are doing now ... outsourcing war so we don't have to fight on our soil all in the "name" of spreading democracy ...oh man, I could go on a complete rant, but I won't.

Anyway, the movie was great. Phillip Seymour Hoffman has yet to do poorly in a film. For Tom Hanks, it was a walk in the park, Julia Roberts, who I think is the most overrated actress in Hollywood conveyed what a misguided do-gooder this Texas socialite really was. But the best part of the film was the end quote from Charlie Wilson ... sums everything up:

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world...
...and then we fucked up the end game." - Charlie Wilson

Yep, we sure did.

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