The Tennessee ConserVOLiance

Cross posted by Toni at Bear Creek Ledger

Paul Kengor (author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and prof of poltiical science at Grove City College) details Hollywood’s propaganda machine which is adept at revising history. I encourage you to read the whole article since the depth of deception with this movie is significant although not terribly surprising given Hollywood’s hatred for Conservatives/Republicans.

Who’s War? Separating Fact from Fiction in ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’

Simply put, the movie vastly exaggerates the influence of Charlie Wilson at the expense of individuals who were equally or even far more influential, and who somehow are not mentioned whatsoever — a gross, intentional, and rather shameless oversight.

Here’s the situation: The movie, and the book, is about a moderate-to-conservative Democratic Congressman, a profane, hard-drinking, womanizing, anti-communist politician who was indeed — as the movie makes abundantly clear– very important to providing a huge amount of covert financial and military support to the Mujahedin rebels who resisted the Soviet Union after the Red Army invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The USSR brutalized the nation and its innocent people. Charlie Wilson’s goal was to give the Afghan “freedom fighters” the supplies they needed to defeat the Soviets.

While all of this is true, this is (at best) half the story — maybe even a quarter of the story. It helps explain what happened in the Democrat-controlled Congress, where the likes of Charlie Wilson were a godsend to counter the San Francisco Democrats and Massachusetts liberals who would have let Central America become a Soviet-Cuban outpost.

But the rest of the story, which receives no mention, is that it was the Reagan administration, and specifically CIA director Bill Casey, National Security Adviser Bill Clark, Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, and Ronald Reagan himself — plus numerous aides — who were the driving force behind supplying the Mujahedin. This movie could have been made 10 years ago about Bill Casey, whose actions were even more dramatic than Charlie Wilson’s — albeit not as obscene — or about Bill Clark.

It is an obvious reflection of the liberal biases of Aaron Sorkin and Mike Nichols — and the CBS News / “60 Minutes”-affiliated staff-that Casey, incredibly and unforgivably, is not referenced even once. This is an outrage, and yet another stunning example of how liberals in Hollywood literally create their own fictional versions of history, totally airbrushing conservatives they never liked and forever refuse to credit even in the face of overwhelming evidence. The movie-makers don’t seem to realize, nor care, that this undermines their overall work — including the parts that have merit. Their lack of fairness works against them.

snip…..Thus far I’ve only noted Reagan actions under Bill Clark in 1982 and 1983. I haven’t gotten to the haymaker, NSDD-166, signed by President Reagan and released in the spring of 1985, which dealt solely with killing the Soviets in Afghanistan, and which was so explosive that to this day the entire document is redacted. While the directive remains completely classified, we know (from those involved) what it sought: Soviet defeat and withdrawal. It was through NSDD-166 that the onslaught of weapons desperately needed by the Mujahedin finally flowed, and through which the silver bullet to the Soviets was alas unleashed: Stinger missiles. The Stingers — the arrival of which is portrayed in the movie — utterly and nearly instantaneously reversed the war, and led to an ultimate Soviet retreat and surrender.

snip….What Reagan told Gorbachev

Likewise, the movie short-changes credit on the human-rights side. While it shows that Charlie Wilson had rightly and quite commendably informed Congressional liberals about the horror of Soviet-made booby-trapped toys blowing limbs off Afghan children, Ronald Reagan went much further, directly excoriating Mikhail Gorbachev for this vicious tactic. Reagan courageously did so, to the shock of his moderate advisers, in his first one-on-one with Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit in November 1985.

An angry, seething Reagan — as emotionally attached to the Afghan suffering as was Charlie Wilson — concluding his reprimand of Gorbachev by snapping at the Soviet leader: “Are you still trying to take over the world?” Gorbachev was visibly shaken, staring at Reagan in silence, mouth agape, with a stunned expression. Reagan arms control director Ken Adelman, a witness, called Reagan’s words in that exchange the most “harsh indictment of Soviet behavior ever delivered to the top Soviet man.” Reagan biographer Edmund Morris reported that the only person who appeared more flabbergasted was the State Department note-taker.

The movie’s total slight of the Reagan administration’s irreplaceable role is its fatal flaw. The only nod to Reagan that I could find was near the end of the movie, when Charlie Wilson justifiably boasts: “I got a Democratic Congress behind a Republican president.” Yes, he did. By then, however, the uninformed viewer is left to ponder: Which Republican president? Behind whom? Did a Republican president support this, too? I’m confused!

I’d been waiting to see if this movie was realistic since I had no knowledge of this Charlie Wilson. Is it too much to ask of Hollywood to get the facts right?

Technorati Tags: Charlie Wilson’s War, Hollywood propaganda, Ronald Reagan, Cold War