A Final Thought Concerning Charlie Wilson

I finished (completely) the biography of Charlie Wilson, reading through the epilogue last night. For those of you who have not read the book and are unfamiliar with recent American history I seriously suggest you do at least a little reading on the Afghan war. It will provide you with a sense of why the United States finds itself in the current position we are in, as well simply providing you with a little knowledge, which never hurts.

At any rate, like the author, George Crile, states, an epilogue generally describes the end of something. Afghanistan, radical Islam, and the shitstorm America is enveloped in is hardly at an end. Not even close to seeing the end.

What Charlie Wilson accomplished with the CIA in Afghanistan is nothing short of a miracle. The CIA, using hundreds of millions of dollars that Wilson made available trained, equipped and armed thousands, tens of thousands of Islamic freedom fighters in Afghanistan with the sole purpose of defeating the Soviet Union. And it worked. It worked better than anything the CIA or the U.S. government had ever tried before. The Soviets really had no option in the end but to withdraw, courtesy of a U.S. backed Afghani resistance. But in the end the world, not just the United States, still suffers from unintentional and unseen consequences of that war.

Radical Islam is a dangerous force in our world. Not because it is based on the Islamic faith; any faith based movement of such radical and violent strength is dangerous, just look at the Inquisition. What makes the radical Islamic movement so incredible dangerous now is the fact that they are well armed, well trained, and well organized. That would make any enemy a threat.

The freedom fighters of Afghanistan were hard to turn down in the early 80’s when Wilson first encountered them. Imagine yourself standing amidst tens of thousands of refugees in some shit hole Pakistani refugee camp. Put yourself in an aid camp with hundreds of wounded men, many of them maimed beyond any sort of medical care. Ask yourself if you would have been able to deny these people assistance. I certainly could not refuse them were I in the shoes of Wilson.

The problem however, is that throughout history the country known as Afghanistan has been peopled by tribal peoples. When no other foe is present in their land they busy themselves with centuries old feuds, butchering themselves with impassioned fury and glee. When a common foe threatens then the Afghan people (like most tribal cultures) manage to unite just long enough to fight off the enemy. When that enemy no longer looms, the union shatters in a heartbeat, as if it had never existed. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan (really though the Soviets did not leave, they left a puppet government in place) that holy alliance of jihadist Afghanis was suddenly, almost overnight, sundered.

The revered holy warriors of Charlie Wilson rapidly descended into barbarity of the sort the western world is unaccustomed to. The unwarranted slaughter of civilians, the shelling of cities, cities populated by Afghanis, in the name of driving out the puppet government, the ambushing of aid caravans; all in the name of driving out the puppet government of Russia. American politicians realized far to late what had been unleashed within Afghanistan. Inadvertently our money and our involvement created an army of fundamental, radical, and brutal soldiers. And there seemed to be no way of stopping its astonishing growth.

Contrary to popular belief, the United States did not simply abandon Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew (even I believed that we did simply walk out once the Red Army was defeated). U.S. money continued to flow into the Afghan cause until 1992, three years after the Soviets left. It wasn’t just money for arms either, a substantial amount went to a program called ‘Cross Borders’, an aid program designed to provide medical treatment, supplies to rebuild gutted cities, food and water, as well as to assist in the rebuilding of the nation. But no matter how much money was pumped into the support of Afghanistan matters briskly deteriorated.

The once noble Afghan campaign now became a source of international embarrassment. Massive and widespread humanitarian violations far worse than anything the Russians ever did began to alarm politicians. Charlie Wilson even refused to meet with the Afghani fighters who visited Washington D.C., a significant changing of the winds for the politician. But no one knew what to do. Saudi Arabia, who throughout the entire war had matched funds dollar for dollar, expected continued U.S. support of Afghanistan. And for a time it was given. In the end though it was a losing battle for America; how do you rebuild a nation destroyed by war when its inhabitants seem hell-bent on slaughtering one another? How do you provide aid services when the caravans are ambushed, how many times must you rebuild the same city because certain people believe that the city must be shelled because of an old feud?

The final and immediately decisive blow to the Afghani cause came just after Clinton was elected. Pakistan, who for throughout the entire war, had funneled arms and equipment to the Afghans, and who was by then receiving enormous amounts of foreign aid, was brought to the forefront of American politics once more. Twice during the ten year campaign Pakistan had been caught twice trying to purchase materials vital to the building of a nuclear weapon. And twice the United States government had threatened to cut aid to Pakistan, and by cutting aid to Pakistan, the aid to Afghanistan would have been severed as well.

Well Pakistan was fingered hard and cold in 1992. There was no longer any argument that would sway the White House; Pakistan was building a nuclear weapon and all foreign aid was now forfeit. Hence the end of the Afghanistan campaign, and the beginning of a deep hatred of America by our former Afghani allies (two warlords of which had already betrayed U.S. trust by publicly announcing their support of Saddam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm).

For the Afghani people the departure of U.S. funds and aid seemed some sort of betrayal. It would seem that they are incapable of understanding that even without the easy excuse of Pakistani nuclear operations that the U.S. government was on the verge of cutting funding based only on humanitarian violations.

But I digress. The question here is simple: Should we have involved ourselves in the conflict to begin with? Was the Soviet Union such a threat that we felt a need to bring them to their knees? Should we have simply left the matter alone? History tells us that the Afghan people have always engaged in inter-tribal warfare, unless a common foe is present. A little research may have given even Wilson pause in his rabid support of the Afghan freedom fighters.

I don’t know the answers to these questions. And I don’t know how to put an end to the problem we face from radical Islam today. The simple solution would be to withdraw from the Middle East all-together. But even that isn’t as simple as it would seem, no matter how much anyone wants to find that hard and fast easy answer.

So the question remains, and will remain for some time to come, what do we do with the problem that we are at least partially responsible for creating?

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