Charlie Wilson’s Bore

Leave it to the Hollywood leftist elite to suck the life out of one of the coolest stories of pure, unbridled American do-it-ism in history — and to spin some of the best evidence of both bi-partisan cooperation and the positive aspects of an interventionist foreign policy (blasphemy, I know) into a campaign-year shill-job…

Before I get started, I want to say that despite whatever conclusions you may have made or impressions I may have projected about my political leanings (believe it or not, they’re a smorgasbord from many points on the spectrum), I do enjoy a good political movie or TV show — be it a thriller, comedy, or “documentary” — from whatever point of view it’s told and regardless of what agenda it’s promoting.

That’s why I’m not ashamed to say that I was a big fan of The West Wing. It was one of the few television programs I’ve actually watched semi-regularly in the last decade. Like other devotees of “The Left Wing,” as it was often nicknamed, I found a lot to like in the fast pace, snappy dialogue, compelling characters, smart (though clearly ideologically-driven) scripts, and what I have to imagine was a fairly accurate portrayal of the way things really get done in Washington…

So, you can imagine the anticipation with which I’ve awaited Charlie Wilson’s War, the Mike Nichols-directed film about the CIA “black ops” backbone of the United States’ subsidization of the brave Afghan rebels who succeeded in driving the invading Soviets from their homeland in the 1980s. The script for this movie was penned by Aaron Sorkin, the driving creative force behind The West Wing. Sorkin was also the scribe responsible for 1992’s taut blockbuster A Few Good Men (and 1995’s limp The American President ).

Of course, everything Sorkin writes is unmistakably bent to the left, as are almost all shows and movies with any degree of political focus nowadays. But that doesn’t mean this kind of screen-fodder (especially Sorkin’s stuff) isn’t entertaining to varying degrees. When I go to the movies or tune in to an engrossing show, I check my own eclectic ideology at the door and surrender to the art and wit of talented people — however misguided my fore-brain might consider them…

But in the case of Charlie Wilson’s War, I found that impossible to do.

Talent and Truth Sold Short

The reason I couldn’t suspend my political brain during Charlie Wilson’s War is the plain fact that it’s boring.

Unlike nearly every episode of The West Wing, this Sorkin creation (based on former 60 Minutes producer George Crile’s 2004 book of the same title) failed to entertain me enough to distract me from thinking about the politics behind it. This really shouldn’t surprise me, since director Mike Nichols is responsible for such light fare as 1998’s flaccid poli-pic Primary Colors, 1996’s hilarious The Birdcage, 1988’s more or less pointless Working Girl — and what I consider his high-water-mark, 1967’s truly classic The Graduate…

But somehow, I thought Sorkin’s rapier wit, sense of drama, and flair with the Washington-esque would combine nicely with Nichols’ command of glib irony and sentimentality — especially when anchored by talent like Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and especially Phillip Seymour Hoffman (more on him in a minute). The result, I hoped, would be a first-class American film. Credible, witty and weighty at the same time.

Needless to say, my hopes were dashed. Why isn’t Charlie Wilson’s War this year’s Munich ? Because Nichols’ and Sorkin’s short-selling of the dramatic true source material makes the film play more like a frenetic 38-minutes-plus-commercials episode of The West Wing than the high-stakes political thriller it was in real life.

In case you aren’t up on the movie’s inspiration, it’s basically about the overt and covert political wranglings of impossibly colorful, charming, womanizing Charles “Good Time Charlie” Wilson — a moderate Texas Democrat Congressman and member of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee — on behalf of the Afghan mujihadeen during their rebellion against the Soviets (and the pro-Soviet Afghan government) in the 1980s. Wilson’s behind-the-scenes maneuverings snowballed into over a billion dollars worth of U.S. aid to the Afghans, much of it in the form of state-of-the-art weaponry that enabled the rebels to destroy Russia’s aircraft and tanks.

Some, including then-Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq, credit Wilson almost solely for the Afghan mujihadeen’s defeat of the Soviets. When asked in a 1989 60 Minutes interview how these freedom fighters were able to defeat the Red Army, Zia said simply “Charlie did it.” The covert support operation Wilson kicked off with the help of a Zia, wealthy Houston socialite Joanne Herring, flirting-with-rogue-status CIA spook Gust Avrakotos, and an ensemble cast of weapons experts, shady foreign arms dealers, dignitaries from multiple warring nations — and yes, strippers and belly dancers — became the largest “black op” in U.S. history…

For such a heady, involved, outlandish, and true story, the movie’s 97 minutes feels WAY too short. Nothing is explored in depth at all — despite the abundance of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction script-fodder. That’s too bad, because the facts and real people that inspired Charlie Wilson’s War are far more compelling and interesting than anything a leftist screenwriter could ever pen. But as it is, the movie is so flat and one-dimensional that it leaves a viewer no choice but to occupy oneself thinking about all the ways in which it is blatantly partisan…

But I digress. This article isn’t really about the True Hollywood Story behind Charlie Wilson’s “war” — which Sorkin cherry-picked and jury-rigged to suit his agenda. This is a movie review and a critique of the media. And on it goes.

A Sweeping Epic Squandered

I wish Spielberg and his crew from Munich would have taken a crack at Charlie Wilson’s War. Then the incredible STORY would have been done justice, partisan chips falling where they may in the minds of viewers.

The problem I have with Charlie Wilson’s War is that it’s not fundamentally concerned with telling a great story — which should be the foremost goal of any movie, in my opinion. If a ripping good story is well told, things like agendas and liberties with the facts can be forgiven, if we even bother to notice them. But like everything Sorkin has ever penned (even his better stuff, like A Few Good Men ), its raison de’ e`tre is simply to paint Republicans in as poor a light as possible…

That’s all fine and good. But when partisan proselytizing interferes with or inhibits the telling of an incredible story, that’s a problem for movie-lovers like me. Such is the case with Charlie Wilson’s War. All of Charlie’s domestic roadblocks seem erected by a cold-hearted Republican administration that doesn’t want to risk the attention that increased funding and weapons to Afghanistan would attract (this seems strange, since the defining tenet of the administration in power was to subvert and fight communism anywhere — Latin American, Africa, etc).

Nowhere are key GOP players in the eight-year support effort like, say, President Reagan mentioned in a positive light. Nor are William Casey or Caspar Weinberger, for that matter. Nowhere is mentioned that what might have begun as a grass-roots effort by one heroic Democrat Congressman and his cadre of brave, committed, and connected insiders from varying backgrounds united in a common goal could not have reached the heights it did without the collaboration of many — from both parties.

And let’s not forget that this “common goal” was the defeat of Communism everywhere on Earth, by any means: Militarily, strategically, financially, philosophically. In other words, the REAGAN DOCTRINE.

The purpose of funding, training, and supplying Afghanistan’s mujihadeen was not simply to defeat the Russians militarily — no force on Earth at the time except the United States could’ve done this. It was to force them closer to bankruptcy and make them look vulnerable by drawing them into a costly military quagmire. Kind of like what we did to ourselves in Vietnam. One could rightly argue that the U.S.-enabled Afghan resistance was the killer blow of the Cold War. The final checkmate that relegated Russian Communism to the scrap-heap of history…

But instead of giving these facts an evenhanded treatment in celluloid, Charlie Wilson’s War implies (with about as much subtlety as a red dress and DD cleavage at a funeral), that American aid to the Afghan rebels facilitated the rise of Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden — and that the 9/11 attacks were simply the ripples of America’s arrogantly meddlesome foreign policy come home to roost. In fact, Sorkin’s first version of the script wrapped with an image of the Pentagon burning! Apparently, this was only changed after an outraged Joanne Herring got her lawyer involved…

Pundits and critics (sometimes they’re the same) are buying into this hogwash, too. For example, the always objective, pictures-before-politics David Ansen of Newsweek opined in his 12/8 review of the film:

“…hanging over this ironic tale is the deeper historical irony that many of the ‘good guy’ rebels Charlie is funding (and we’re cheering) will become our mortal enemies. At the end of this story, any informed viewer knows, lies big-time blowback.”

Any informed viewer knows? What’s that, except blatant partisan-ism?

Any informed critic should know that by and large, it isn’t Afghan Muslims we’re fighting in Al Qaeda and Bin Laden — it’s militant Arab Muslims who’ve gleefully set up shop in the vacuum left by the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of Afghanistan’s Communist government…

Now, instead of closing with shots of America in flames, Charlie Wilson’s War ends with Hoffman’s Avrakotos telling Hanks’ Wilson a laughably overwrought anecdote about a Zen master who says “We’ll see” to everything — overlaid on images of Afghan Muslims triumphantly exalting their Stinger missiles. This is followed by a quote from Charlie Wilson himself about how the U.S. did the war part right, but screwed up “the end game.”

First off, as every scriptwriter should know (I’m sure Sorkin does, he just trusts in the assumption that the average viewer doesn’t), the vast majority of leftover Stingers were collected by the U.S. after the Afghan war. Not that this matters. These units have a “shelf life” of only a few years — which means there’s no way the missiles Al Qeada may be using against us in Iraq could be leftover Stingers from the struggle against Soviet occupation. Most sources peg the SAMs that are giving our aircraft a hard time over Baghdad as Iranian-made units…

Second, and in fairness to the film, there is no small amount of truth to the idea that the U.S. didn’t follow through after helping the Afghans to win their war with the Soviets — which may indeed have created conditions favorable to the rise of Al Qaeda. But hold the phone a minute: Wouldn’t that fact be a powerful argument FOR a sustained American “nation-building” effort in Iraq? Were we not to follow through on what we started there, wouldn’t we be repeating the same mistakes Sorkin and Nichols are seeming to say we made in Afghanistan — and are attempting to make election-year hay with?

But hey, it’s only a movie, right? The message is the thing here — not the truth.

Clearly, that message is that as long as it’s being run by Republicans, the U.S. is evil and stupid — and that the GOP’s interventionist foreign policies are ripe with unintended Karmic consequences that’ll come back to bite us in the ass.

This may be true, of course. We’ll see. But while we’re on the topic of Zen and possible outcomes, it’s only fair to consider what might have been had Wilson and his band of bipartisan/intercontinental brothers-in-arms NOT intervened with U.S. dollars and tech on behalf of the Afghans…

Right now, the Soviet Union might not only alive and kicking — but a rejuvenated superpower in command of a very strategic area. Had they prevailed in Afghanistan (they would have surely, without our aid to the rebels), they’d have been in a prime position to roll a huge tonnage of military might through some of the world’s most oil-rich nations: Iran and Iraq. They’d have had motive to go with opportunity, too. A simultaneous strike on these two nations while they were fighting each other (1980-1988) might easily have been a rout…

Now I ask you: Had these things occurred, would the U.S. be the world’s only remaining superpower today? Or would we be begging, hat in hand, with the Soviets for our oil? Perhaps we would have faced an increased likelihood of annihilation — or at the very least, the prolonged agony of a Cold War extended long into the future, and on many more fronts than we could have ever imagined fighting it on.

Bottom line: Despite some fine acting and generally good cinematography, it isn’t the blatant partisanship, lack of depth, and elemental brevity that makes Charlie Wilson’s War a failure — even as an exercise in politics. It’s the fact that it trusts in the audience to perceive the “what ifs” and “we’ll sees” in the same manner its screenwriter and director do.

But “we’ll see” is a sword that cuts both ways, Messrs. Sorkin and Nichols. If you’re going to condemn an interventionist foreign policy to further a domestic political agenda, you’d better do it in a way that’s entertaining and compelling enough to distract people from seeing your true colors — and prevents them from leaving theatres half-convinced that interventionism may be the RIGHT course, if only we’re willing to stay that course and do it properly this time…

Drained, not entertained,
Jim Amrhein
Freedoms Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder

December 28, 2007