Academic

Did Charlie Wilson Contribute Anything at All to the Nation's Secuirty?

By Robert Justin Lipkin

Check out Chalmers Johnson's critique of Charlie Wilson's War: "I have some personal knowledge of Congressmen like Charlie Wilson (D-2nd District, Texas, 1973-1996) because, for close to twenty years, my representative in the 50th Congressional District of California was Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving an eight-and-a-half year prison sentence for soliciting and receiving bribes from defense contractors. Wilson and Cunningham held exactly the same plummy committee assignments in the House of Representatives--the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee plus the Intelligence Oversight Committee--from which they could dole out large sums of public money with little or no input from their colleagues or constituents.  . . . Both men flagrantly abused their positions--but with radically different consequences. Cunningham went to jail because he was too stupid to know how to game the system--retire and become a lobbyist--whereas Wilson received the Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service's first "honored colleague" award ever given to an outsider and went on to become a $360,000 per annum lobbyist for Pakistan.  . . . In a secret ceremony at CIA headquarters on June 9, 1993, James Woolsey, Bill Clinton's first Director of Central Intelligence and one of the agency's least competent chiefs in its checkered history, said: "The defeat and breakup of the Soviet empire is one of the great events of world history. There were many heroes in this battle, but to Charlie Wilson must go a special recognition." One important part of that recognition, studiously avoided by the CIA and most subsequent American writers on the subject, is that Wilson's activities in Afghanistan led directly to a chain of blowback that culminated in the attacks of September 11, 2001 and led to the United States' current status as the most hated nation on Earth." Read the rest.

Johnson's argument is persuasive, extremely persuasive. Yet, recently on Sunday Morning expressed no regrets and gleefully preened when unveiling a weapon, a rocket-propelled grenade, I think, which was given to him by the Mujahideen--a.k.a. the Taliban and Al-Qaeda inter alia. These are the people Wilson supported and armed enabling them to use these arms to kill Americans in Afghanistan. These are the same people who Ronald Reagan called  "freedom fighters" and Charlie Wilson chimed in adoringly depicting them as "heroic." These same "heroic freedom fighters" parented the craven fanatics who wantonly killed thousands of Americans on 9-11.  Yet, neither of these conservatives-one Democrat, the other a Republican--icons are in any way held accountable. Several years ago, Bill Bennett wrote a screed condemning the lack of outrage--blaming American citizens for being "enablers"--over Clinton's "outrageous" conduct of lying about his sexual peccadilloes. Outrage toward perjury in a sexual infidelity case?  That's right! Where, pray tell, is the outrage now over Reagan and Wilson creation of fanatical terrorists who are intent on killing Americans? Americans have, indeed, lost a sense of outrage, and if Bennett is an example, we no longer even appreciate what type of conduct should be the object of outrage. No one connects the role Ronald Reagan and Charlie Wilson's outrageous conduct played in bringing about our current difficulties in Afghanistan. Oh, yes, let's not forget George W. Bush's virtual abandonment of the pursuit of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in order to redirect American forces to fight the calamitous and unnecessary war in Iraq. We've traded genuine outrage for "outrage" over insignificance. That surely bespeaks the moral death of a nation.

Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on January 23, 2008 (boomark / email).