Hollywood’s Dangerous Afghan Illusion

From the Archives: A newly discovered document undercuts a key storyline of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s that it was Charlie Wilson’s War, wrote Robert Parry on April 7, 2013.

[consortiumnews.com]

{However, “Charlie Wilson’s War” like many Hollywood films took extraordinary license with the facts, presenting many of the war’s core elements incorrectly. That in itself might not be a serious problem, except that key U.S. policymakers have cited these mythical “facts” as lessons to guide the current U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan.}

{Raymond also understood that the administration’s hand in the P.R. projects must stay hidden, because of other legal bans on executive-branch propaganda. “The work down within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length,” Raymond noted in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.

From the NSC, Raymond organized inter-agency task forces to bombard the U.S. public with hyped-up propaganda about the Soviet threat in Central America and in Afghanistan. Raymond’s goal was to change the way Americans viewed these dangers, a process that the Reagan administration internally called “perception management.”}

There's no excuse any longer on our part to allow these war hawks to send our men and women off to be murdered without standing up and speaking out against it. The part being played by public relation firms is no secret anymore. Unless you're living with your head buried in a political sand trap. This same agenda is being played out today still using Russia and now China.

{“Their idea was to encourage Soviet officers and soldiers to defect to the mujahideen.}

Soon the Taliban will defect to Russia and China for support. I have little doubt that our government hasn't already made some deals itself. As the Taliban supposedly gave amnesty to private contractors within Afghanistan.

{Most significantly, the mythology enshrined in the movie and embraced by the policymakers obscured the key lessons of the 1980s: the dangerous futility of trying to impose a Western or military solution on Afghanistan as well as the need to explore negotiation and compromise even when dealing with unsavory foes. It wasn’t the mythical U.S. “abandonment” of Afghanistan in February 1989 that caused the devastation of the past two decades, but rather the uncompromising policies of the Reagan-Bush-41 administrations.

First, there was the ascendance of propaganda over truth. The U.S. government was well aware of the gross human rights crimes of the Afghan “muj” but still sold them as honorable “freedom fighters” to the American people. Second, there was the triumphalism of Gates and other war hawks, who insisted on rubbing Moscow’s nose in its Afghan defeat and thus blocked cooperation on a negotiated settlement which held out the promise of a less destructive outcome.

Those two factors the deceit and the hubris set the stage for the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a renewed Afghan War bogging down tens of thousands of U.S. troops, America’s disastrous detour into Iraq, and now a costly long-term U.S. commitment to Afghanistan that is expected to last at least until 2024. With a distorted account of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Tom Hanks and Hollywood didn’t help.}

These I heard being repeated on NPR and Rick Sanchez yesterday. Robert Parry called it in 2013, 8 years ago. How many lives ago is that!?! And wasted tax dollars?