Tom Hanks looks set to team up with Mike Nichols on a very controversial story indeed, Charlie Wilson’s War. This is the story of how the CIA funded and trained the mujahideen to fight off Russia and how it was all engineered behind the scenes. Controversial stuff indeed.
From Reuters:
The Universal Pictures project centers on the CIA’s covert operation in Afghanistan to arm the mujahideen during the 1980s. The covert ops were engineered by Charlie Wilson, a charismatic, wheeler-dealer, liberal Texas congressman who teamed with a rogue CIA operative. The two manipulated Congress, the CIA and a host of foreign governments in order to assist the Afghan rebels in their fight against the Soviets. Many of the men armed by the CIA went on to become the Taliban’s enforcers and Osama bin Laden’s protectors.
Cinematical also site Variety as claiming that Julia Roberts may be coming out of retirement and teaming up with Hanks for the project.
This is a very good tale to tell, not so that of Charlie Wilson but more the whole CIA backing of Afghanistan part. For this tells a large part of the hatred felt by many of the mujahideen against the US. Of course there were more factors than just the funding and assistance being pulled out of the country as soon as the war was won, there are other countries influences as well, but what I hope is that this project touches on them and goes some way to addressing why there is this hatred, rather than just portraying the evils continuously.
The two go hand in hand. Afghanistan fought thinking that afterwards their war torn country would be aided and rebuilt, it wasn’t. That’s nothing to do with “leaving a vacuum”. It’s got loads to do with why those people grew to hate the US.
Have you read Charlie Wilson’s War? This is a story about fighting communists, not about the vaccuum we created by simply leaving Afghanistan once that fight was over. The ironic part about the story told in Charlie Wilson’s War is that the same people we helped get rid of the communists in their country grew to hate us.