Posted on 12/05/2007 1:38:46 PM PST by murdoog
Charlie Wilson's War is the true story of how a playboy congressman, a renegade CIA agent and a beautiful Houston socialite joined forces to lead the largest and most successful covert operation in history. Their efforts contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, with consequences that reverberate throughout the world today. Oscar® winners Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman team with Academy Award®-winning director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to bring George Crile's best-selling book to the screen.
Charlie Wilson (Hanks) was a bachelor congressman from Texas who had a habit of showing up in hot tubs with strippers and cocaine. His "Good Time Charlie" exterior, however, masked an extraordinary mind, a deep sense of patriotism and a passion for the underdog, and in the early 1980s the underdog was Afghanistan-which had just been brutally invaded by the Russians.
Charlie's longtime friend and patron and sometime lover was Joanne Herring (Roberts), one of the wealthiest women in Texas and a virulent anti-communist. Believing the American response to the Russian invasion was anemic at best, she prods Charlie into doing more for the Mujahideen (Afghan freedom fighters).
Charlie's partner in this uphill endeavor is CIA Agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman), a blue-collar operative in a company of Ivy League blue bloods. Together, the three of them-Charlie, Joanne and Gust-travel the world to form unlikely alliances among the Pakistanis, Israelis, Egyptians, arms dealers, law makers and a belly dancer.
Their success was remarkable. Funding for covert operations against the Soviets went from $5 million to $1 billion annually. The Red Army retreated out of Afghanistan. When asked how a group of peasants was able to deliver such a decisive blow to the army of a superpower, Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq responded simply, "Charlie did it."
Sounds great. Pity no FReepers will see it because of a variety of left-wing actors in the film. /sarc with a :-)
Read the book! We might need “Good Times Charlie” to deal with the Hildebeast!
It may have been in hindsight a huge mistake to have awakened the Islamist Raison d’etre for it’s existence. Afghanistan was not the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union, communism was. Our problem was in perpetuating the mistake of supporting islamists in afghanistan and following that up with support for them in kosovo and bosnia. For the muslims it was an alliance of convenience. They would just as gladly have sided with the communists had those communists also been Muslims instead of atheists.
My attitude is “Don’t trust, but verify.
If it is a positive message and not anti American propagnada, I will see it. Its the message in most cases that bother me the most.
I read the book - quite enjoyed it.
Agree we didn’t exactly pick our natural allies in Bosnia.
I am gonna try to read the book b/f the movie, sounds like a really interesting read.
WILSONNNN!!!!
I’ve been curious myself. My initial gut feeling was pretty much the same as yours, that the liberation of Afghanistan from the Soviets would be portrayed the result of a lark by some clown from Texas. But I’ve done some research and it looks like Charlie Wilson was pretty liberal, so maybe him and his cause will be treated sympathetically.
And with another movie the left will now perform their revisionist history lesson about what brought down the Soviet Union while claiming it was a Democratic Congressman that single handily brought them down.
Me too. I mean, no way I’d watch any of Michael Moore’s rubbish, but hey, there are good and great films out there, and often you see people swearing to not watch a film because so-and-so is in it.
DOn’t get me wrong. I will not ever see another Alec Baldwin movie.
I get it!
And if there’s Tom Selleck, Bruce Willis, Bo Derek and other conservatives in it?
Afghanistan wasn't the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union, but it definitely helped it along.
The Soviet Union's sustained itself on ideology as much if not more than anything else.
Afghanistan was a serious blow to that ideology. It was a huge embarrassment to the Soviet Union that their powerful, modern military was turned aside by a bunch of loosely organized tribes bound together by their own ideology fought them off even though they were relatively poorly equipped and trained.
Afghanistan was a clash of ideologies as much as anything else, and the Communists suffered a huge moral defeat.
The Muslim tribes of Afghanistan did win a moral victory, and they turned out to be our enemies as well as the Soviets, but they made a useful ally of convenience, and leaving to their own devices against the Russians would have gained us nothing.
We did not create radical Islam, nor did we significantly empower them. We helped arm them with what were modern weapons at the time, but the more dangerous weapons were provided in limited quantities, and haven't been modern for quite some time.
We also didn't train them to be murderous terrorists, they did that on their own.
Have you noticed that the outwardy conservative actors don’t typically work with the outspoken lefties. I may be mistaken, but when was the last time Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin worked on the same film. But to answer your question, the content would play a large role in my decision.
This is how hollywood rewrites history, with credit for the fall of the Soviet Union shared between Gorbachev and a Democrat congressman. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II are much more responsible for the fall of the USSR than Gorbachev and a democrat from Houston. Be sure to tell the children this, because they will not get this info from school or hollywood.
A-B-C: ALWAYS BE CLOSING!
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