Thursday, April 3, 2008

Charlie Wilson’s War

Charlie Wilson’s War
Author: George Crile 2003 523 pp
My rating: 4*
Started February 29 2008, Finished March 8 2008

This book is much better – deeper, extensive and heartfelt – than the entertaining movie inspired by it. The author, a TV producer who first heard about Wilson and his almost single handed funding of the CIA’s covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan while producing a 60 Minutes feature about it after the Soviets had been improbably routed,, is not a professional writer or historian, which comes through repeatedly in his enthusiastic use of cliché, frequent failure to put people and events in greater historical context and sometimes even in blatant error such as when writing (p441) that the Reagan administration’s Iran-Contra shenanigans of 1985 were motivated by a desire to free the Iran hostages even though they’d been released in 1981; furthermore, the books sources consist almost entirely of interviews with the surviving participants which tends to slightly undermine credibility and make almost everyone look like a hero. But, on the other hand, what a story! The book is filled with larger than life personalities, a different take on Islamist fanaticism and fatalism (“The mujahideen, with their total faith in Allah’s will, acted as if the shells were not bursting by their sides. They just kept walking.”) and most interestingly to me, an inside look at how the US government can work not through open, democratic processes, but by cloakroom deals motivated by horse trading and the politics of personal power – Wilson’s actions resulted in billions of dollars in weaponry being diverted to near medieval Afghan tribesmen over a period of several years without anyone in the press and very few members of the elected government having any idea.

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