Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

Occasionally I watch a movie that opens my eyes to well-known events and shows me an angle that I had not considered before.

Charlie Wilson’s War is presumably based on true events, and I have no evidence of  this being true or false, so let’s say it’s true. In the late 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was getting all the credit for ending the Cold War, the Russians were fighting a cruel and bloody war in Afghanistan. They had absolute superiority in terms of numbers and military equipment. The Afghan freedom fighters were resisting with rifles on the ground. The Soviets came in with helicopter gunships and blew away villages, men, women and children indiscriminately. They actually created mines that looked like toys, so the children would pick them up to play, and their hands and sometimes arms were blown away, if they survived. The Russians had figured out that it takes much more time and effort to take care of maimed children than healthy ones, and parents taking care of children had to time or resources to take up arms against the Russians. By 1990, half of the entire population of Afghanistan was under 14 years old, and many of the children were maimed.

In comes a U.S. Congressman from Texas, Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks). He travels to Afghanistan and sees the refugee camps, observes the sorry state of the resistance, and is truly moved to do the right thing. That’s a stretch for a hard-drinking, cocaine-using and womanizing congressman from Texas, but he seems like just the right guy for the job. With the help of a Houston Socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) and a cunning and courageous CIA veteran Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour), he raises money from the U.S. government for the Afghans. Five million dollars a year gradually turns into one billion dollars a year for Russian weapons that, through a complex set of maneuvers, comes from Israel through Pakistan into Afghanistan. Helicopters get shot down, tanks get blown up, and the Afghans start getting the upper hand and drive out the mightiest army in the world. The cold war ends, and Charlie Wilson does not get any credit. Really, did you know who Charlie Wilson even was before seeing this movie?

This is where the movie review ends and the social criticism starts: Fast forward a few years. The lost, abused and maimed children grow up. What will their worldview be? They need to survive, without much of a country, with no parents, no industry, no love and no hope. The very freedom fighters that we trained and supplied with arms in 1988 slowly morph into – yes – the Taliban. The poverty, despair, physical pain, hunger and lack of love and security drives them to Muslim fundamentalism. Soon they blow up schools, libraries, art, treasures of antiquity and anything foreign. They brutalize their own women, take away their rights to an education, and start turning against the West. Terrorist camps arise, and soon 9/11 happens. We don’t remember that we helped create this in Afghanistan. Do the research! Just like we armed Saddam Hussein in those days. Oh, how quickly nations forget.

All that and much more buzzed through my head as I was watching Charlie Wilson’s War.

Rating: ***

Men are Created Equal – Almost

The United States at the time of the American Revolution (the signing of the Declaration of Independence) had a total population of 2,500,000 people in the 13 original states. Out of those 2.5 million, 500,000 were black slaves. In Virginia alone, there were 200,000 slaves. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both Virginians, owned about 200 slaves each. They were among the richest citizens in the country. John Adams from Massachusetts, a lawyer of modest means in comparison, owned no slaves at all.

The most famous section of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It would take another 90 years before slavery was abolished after the Civil War and another almost 150 years before women could vote.

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Yesterday we visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I must confess, this is the first presidential library I have ever visited, but now I know it is not the last.

I didn’t know what exactly to expect from a presidential library. It’s a museum, laid out and run like any other specialty museum. Reagan’s is very well done.

Located on a hilltop in Simi Valley, overlooking a great panorama of rugged Southern California mountains, it is definitely a memorable place of reflection. The main building has the feeling of a Mission. The large open courtyard has a fountain in the center, and the surrounding buildings are lined with covered walks and columns.

Once in the museum, we got to walk through many exhibits chronicling Reagan’s long life and many careers. Reagan was a born leader, starting out in sports, playing football and other sports in high school and college. Later he was a sportscaster, then an actor, and finally a politician, first Governor of California, then the President of the United States. Whenever he belonged to a club, its seems he became its president, or in sports the team captain.

As we walked the various exhibits we saw real memorabilia of Reagan’s life at the various stages. The most interesting two exhibits are the Air Force One and the Oval Office.

An exact replica of the Oval Office as it was during Reagan’s second term, 1984 to 1988, is represented. I found it fascinating to be standing in the Oval Office, seeing the furniture arrangements, the pictures on the walls, the decorations on the counters, and the desk. The desk is a replica of the “Hayes” desk, built in the 1870s and first used by President Hayes, and later by many other presidents, including Kennedy and Reagan. The original desk is currently used by Obama. There is no practical way for any ordinary citizen to get into the real Oval Office, so seeing a replica is the next best thing.

The tour guide had some anecdotes about the Oval Office, of course, and at one point talked about Reagan never going into the Oval Office without a suit coat. We have heard this before, and then echoed by George W. when he touted early in his presidency that he would reintroduce decorum and respect to the Oval Office, after the purported indiscretions of Clinton.

Well, right after walking out of the Oval Office, I came upon a picture wall showing Reagan in a number of situations with the public, and right there he was, in the Oval Office with a number of people, sitting behind his desk in a jogging suit jacket.

So much for the mystique about the suit and tie.

The Oval Office is such a famous locale and institution of our government, it carries with it a mystique that is almost unparalleled, except, perhaps by Air Force One.

The decommissioned Boeing 707 with the call sign 27000 is on exhibit in the Air Force One Pavillion. Now this was worth the visit. This plane was brought into service in 1973 and was first used by Nixon. The last president to travel on it was George W. Bush. You get to walk through the entire plane. You see the president’s office and the various other sections. Every one of them is instantly recognizable from movies and news reports, of course. I remember seeing Nixon stand outside the doors raising of both arms in his famous last farewell. I stood right there at that door. The president’s desk is much smaller than it looks on TV. The “secure phones” look archaic. The little “communications nook” looks like something out of a fifties movie. The whole thing is surprisingly low-tech. Of course, they didn’t have laptops then and when Reagan answered mail, he wrote on a legal pad by hand, so it could be typed later.

I was overwhelmed by history walking through this plane, used by Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. But of the more than one million miles logged by the plane during its service, Reagan clocked  over 600,000 of them. He alone took more than 220 trips using this aircraft during his years.

Many years hence perhaps we can see one of the new 747 Air Force One planes in a presidential library, and we will then marvel about Clinton and Bush and Obama and the trips they took. But with the years of service still left on those planes, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see that.

After this experience, I have resolved that I will seek out other presidential libraries. Next will be Nixon’s, which is within driving distance from our home, and then others as I travel to the various places. I’ll just need to take extra time on my trips to make it possible.

Legalizing Marijuana

In my 52 years, my lips may have touched a dozen joints, mostly in my early twenties. I do not recall my brain being affected by it. I am not a smoker so inhaling makes me cough horribly so the whole experience is pretty pointless to me. Once I felt the effect, after eating a couple of potent brownies. It was a fun night with a lot of laughing.

Today I found this MSN headline about consideration of legalizing marijuana in California. What a good idea!

We should be able to buy marijuana by brand name in boxes at the drug store. There would be ingredient labels. The stuff would be cheaper, safer and more accessible. Those of us that are not interested are not affected. Those that are, who now have to take actions that incriminate them to get it, do no longer have to hide. The government could tax it heavily, like alcohol, cigarettes and gasoline. The price would be substantially lower than what it costs from the guy in the hooded sweatshirt on the street corner. And the entire criminal trafficking enterprise would starve out for lack of market.

I do not believe that there would be any more use of marijuana than we currently have already, whether with juveniles, or with adults. It would just be a lot cheaper and safer.

And while we’re at it, why don’t we do the same with cocaine? I have never touched it, so I don’t know what the attraction is, but there must be a powerful one, or else there would not be such a massive market.

Selling cocaine at the drugstore would drive the entire cartel industry out of business. The market would be gone overnight. No more killings in Mexico, the police corruption would ebb off, since the money would be gone, and the brutality would subside.

Sounds like a win/win/win/win proposition. Where do I sign?

Senator Grassley’s Tweets – Juvenile

Senator Grassley is a frequent Twitter contributor. According to MSNBC:

Grassley’s first tweet:

“Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us ‘time to deliver’ on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.”

A short time later:

“Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a ‘hammer’ u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL.”

Sorry Senator. You are a United States Senator, not a rocker or a high school kid. This makes you look juvenile. Do you really want us to take you seriously?

Obama’s Mother-in-Law

Marian Robinson is a 71 year old black woman from Chicago who has cooked and cleaned all her life, raised a family and was a wife to a working class man.

Now this black woman lives in the White House and is waited on by a bunch of white people, and some black ones, I am sure.

Blacks were abused, subjugated, worked to the bone, humiliated and, yes, sometimes killed, for centuries in this country. Now we have a black first family, and the country seems to be proud of it for the most part.

This is good for our country.

Cheney – Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Dick Cheney voiced his opinions again. The article is ok, but read the comments!

Cheney actually blames Obama. The man has been in office barely three months. The economy melted down during the Bush/Cheney watch. The first round of bailouts, $700 billion of it, was requested and spent by Bush/Cheney. Don’t forget that $165 million went to AIG bonuses.

The money the Obama administration requested isn’t even on the street yet.

At the same time, the grand architect of our fiscal and defense policies over the past eight years, during whose reign the meltdown occurred, is blaming the guy who just came in a few months ago and is trying to put out the fires?

I am in disbelief.

What Does 100 Billion Dollars Buy?

When Ronald Reagan first proposed the International Space Station, it was supposed to cost $8 billion.

The total cost of the International Space Station, now nearly complete, is estimated to approach $100 billion.

We got decades of research, employment, frontier innovation and inspiration for generations of young people all over the world for that money.

Compare that to $185 billion Bush spent last fall, without much fanfare and questions, on AIG, and AIG is nowhere near assured survival.

Where did we get more bang for the buck?

Condoms and the Pope

The pope visited Africa for the first time and promptly spoke about condoms and AIDS.

In many countries in Africa, there are two inherent cultural things going on that contribute to the inexorable spread of AIDS:

1. African men think that if they like a woman, any woman, anywhere, they have a right to have sex with her. In many African countries, even in modern times, polygamy is a common practice. Read Obama’s book Dreams of My Father and you will get the gist.
2. There is a myth that circulates in Africa that having sex with a virgin cures AIDS.

Take those two facts together and you realize that Africa is an AIDS powderkeg. The statistics we are reading are simply corroborating this reality.

Here comes the leader of the Catholic Church. According to the article referenced above:

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

The Roman Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight against AIDS.

How exactly the pope intends to impart to African men his version of morality, the definition of premarital sex, fidelity and general ethical behavior as well as health eduction is not clear.

It’s going to take more than a Catholic message. Catholics in particular and Christians in general have caused so much damage, pain, injustice and often death through the millennia that I simply can’t buy into their message today as anything more valuable and sensible than it’s been all along.

The Church has a history of accumulating wealth and usurp power for an elite few, by keeping the masses misinformed, by hiding the truth when convenient, by sowing guilt to squelch dissent and threatening eternal damnation to those who dare to challenge the establishment.

Telling African men that condoms are not the answer is misinformation. Condoms are not the answer to the AIDS problem in Africa, but every time a condom is used, one woman has a much better chance not to get infected than she would otherwise. If a condom saves one woman from AIDS, power to the condom.

It’s going to take a lot more than a few soundbites by the pope to fix Africa.

Shut Down AIG

Remember when Reagan first came into office and he fired all the striking air traffic controllers? Well, you have to be older than 40 or so to have a chance to remember that. Still, it was a gutsy move. Nobody believed that he could do that — let them all go, but he did. The planes continued to fly, and striking was over, for a long time. That was one of Reagan’s great acts and he got instant respect for it.

Obama needs to bust up and shut down AIG. Sorry for the $170 billion already spent. We could have rebuilt the entire road system in the US for that money, or constructed all new schools. Alas, we exercised bad judgment.

But it’s too late to worry about that. There are people at AIG that should not only not get a bonus now, they should not have a job. Fire them, and do it now. Then deal with the lawsuits later. Drag them out for years so they have to fight for every penny, while they are home watching the soaps and do no more damage. It might cost the same in the long run, but the American public will be satisfied. Make room for  a better insurance company.