Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
by George Crile
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Book Summary Information
Author: George CrileEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-06
ISBN: 0802143415
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times
Book Review: A History of Combat Logistics and Arms Sales
Summary: 2 Stars
I saw the movie based on this story with Tom Hanks but I honestly don't remember much of it. It did interest me enough that when I saw this on a bookshelf with Tom and Julia on the cover, I thought I'd take a look into it and got it.
This books starts out well and portrays the key characters in a colorful way. There were quite a few characters that crept in and out of the narrative that are never mentioned in the movie. It starts out reading like a very entertaining story that's almost like reading a novel. But after about the first 10 or 12 chapters, it starts to get noticeably bogged down in the details of how to get an anit-aircraft weapon that is not manufactured by the United States and that can shoot down a Soviet Hind helicopter. I finally had to just skip ahead to the chapter where they finally got the approval from Congress and the White House to give the American-made Stingers to the mujahideen.
In general, the book gets pretty boring and repetitive after the early parts. In fact, the only thing that kept me going to as far as chapter 22 was all the hilarious anecdotes that were recounted by all the key players involved in this epic covert war. I remember reading how a couple of British SAS officers had gotten involved in helping the Afghans and recounting their story about how they woke up in their tent in an Afghan camp to the sound of a man groaning miserably. They got up and looked and saw a blond Russian POW was getting raped by his mujahideen captors. As if that wasn't funny enough, I skimmed ahead a bit and read how the Tennessee mules that were being sent to Pakistan to be used to carry the ordinance to the front were also a source of sexual comforts for the mujahideen.
There's also another story how an Egyptian general tries to woo Gust and Charlie (the key players in this conspiracy) to buy an anti-aircraft cannon from him. They recall how they flew to Egypt and were set up in picnic chairs by a landfill and were served Coca-colas and Kentucky Fried Chicken only to witness that the mule team that carried the disassembled cannons weren't able to climb up the landfill but went backwards instead.
There is an epilogue that discusses 9/11 that I read but it wasn't really informative. Having gave up on the book, I was left with a better understanding about all the details, the politics, and the money it took to keep these "freedom fighters" supplied for a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union but no idea really about the scope of the fighting--just numbers and a partnership arranged with the Saudis to match the US contribution dollar for dollar. The only helpful insight I got about what might have led to 9/11 was the fact that the Pakistani's intelligence service coordinated everything at the front, and all we seemed to have done was give them the toys to get the job done. Peculiarly, nobody in Washington seemed to think this was nothing more than a backwater until Gust and Charlie got everyone--including Congress--to treat it like a Russian Vietnam. And when the Soviets did pull out, the world attention turned to the fall of communism. But these zealots--armed and trained in modern military tactics--turned to internal battles with the fundamentalists coming out on top.
This is basically a journalist's account based on interviews with a wide number of sources that are mostly uncredited because everything is classified. What you end up getting is the humorous accounts of the congressman (Charlie) and the CIA officer (Gust). I suppose it's not a bad book if it was edited and trimmed down quite a bit to under 250 pages. (This edition is over 500 pages long!) If you get this book, don't really hope to find any insight about current political situations in the Islamic world. If you're a fan of history it gives you some insight in what triggered the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR, but it's not nearly the engrossing spy caper the reviewers claim it to be on the back cover. It's basically the story about a couple of guys working with almost unlimited power (through little oversight and many personal connections) putting billions of dollars in weapons and training to a bunch of pan-Islamic militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and bled the Soviet Union dry. And then when it was over, those jihad veterans got swept away by the victorious leaders and became the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
But seriously, the story the SAS officers told about seeing the Afghans rape a blond Russian POW and the whole Tennessee mules thing is the highlight of this book. As the say: "Know Your Enemy!"
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