Charlie Wilson's War

Tuesday, February 16, I watched the film Charlie Wilson’s War in class. The film is a drama based on Congressman Charles Wilsons' (1933-2010) efforts to help the people in Afghanistan during the war against Soviet. Wilson’s efforts to help had some unforeseen and long-reaching effects that are still going on today. In this blog post I will answer three questions:

1. Write a short review of the movie and state your personal opinions on both subject and movie.

The movie is set in the early 1980s. Charlie Wilson is a US congressional representative from Texas. Wilson dedicates his political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the support they need to defeat the Soviet Union. Wilson receives a lot of help from his rich, conservative supporter and lover, Joanne Herring and the CIA agent Gust Avrakotos. Because the only demand the people from Texas have is their right to bear arms and low taxes, Wilson is able to save up a lot of favors by, as he says "voting yes a lot", to cases that are important to his colleges. By reclaiming his favors he manages to increase the budget for the Afghan warfare from $5 million to $1 billion. However, Charlie Wilson eventually learns that even though they won a military victory, there are other consequences to that fight that are being ignored.

I thought the movie was excellent. It was both thrilling and interesting as well as enlightening and funny. At the end of the film there is a conversation between Wilson and Avrakotos where Avrakotos warns him that even though they have won, there is still a lot of work to do in the war-damaged country. And that leads me to my personal opinion about the subject. I though it was quite amazing that no one would give $1 million to rebuilding Afghanistan. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to see that things easily can evolve in a negative direction, in a post war country where about 50 % of the population is less than fifteen years old, and have no family or school to go to. It is quite sad to think about how history could have been changed if they had just given the money needed to build schools and infrastructure in Afghanistan.

2. How did the movie portray Charles Wilson?

Charles Wilson is portrayed as a charming fellow who is good with the ladies and who knows how to speak for himself. He loves his drink at after hours as much as at work. He is always seen with a new woman and he only hires beautiful girls to work for him. But Wilson is not in any way just a drunk and a womanizer. As mentioned, the fact that he is a congressman in Texas, gives him some advantages. Saving up favors and then reclaiming them in that certain way shows us that Wilson is smart.

3. Did you understand more about the conflict after watching the movie?

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My answer to this question is most definitely: YES. Here is why; I never really knew the background for the conflict. After watching the movie I had both learned the origins of the conflict and I understood why there had developed one at all.

Again, it is sad to think about how easily history could have been altered. No one has ever said this better than Charlie Wilson himself:

"These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame."

Charlie Wilson

Class today

Class today was a little different than usual. We were supposed to prepare for our test text Tuesday which is about politics in the United States. The class was divided into five groups - each group with its own responsibilities. The front desk talked to all the groups and made sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to. The research group found material while the journalists picked out the most important topics and wrote them down. I was in the teachers group. We made rubrics with criteria for testing and made the test questions. I think we made the test quite hard actually. It is funny; I had always thought that my teacher's tests were not that good and that I would make better ones myself. But as it turns out - I make them to hard. Finally the designers made Glogs with material.

I like that my teachers use different teaching methods. And I am glad Ann was feeling creative yesterday when she came up with this system. Things get boring really fast when there is no variation. However the system probably did not work as well for everyone else as it did for me. I do not think the front desk learnt as much as the journalists. Next time a front desk probably would not be needed. The research group and the journalists could make one big group because of the huge amount of work the journalists had to do. If we were to do this again I would probably pick the teachers group one more time because I thought it was fun and I learnt a lot.

The Road - class book

I am currently reading Cormac McCarthy's book "The Road" as my class book. My bad conscience is that I am only on page 40. I have just had so much to do these last couple of weeks that I am behind in some of my classes. The plan is to finish it in my winter vacation.

The Road was published in 2006. It is a science-fiction novel and the plot is set in a post-apocalypse world. A father and his young son are the main characters and they are traveling across a gray and destroyed landscape. The novel received excellent reviews and was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.




As mentioned I have not gotten that far. But my first impression is good and I think I am going to like it. It is really different from the books I usually read which are crime novels and romance novels. It is strangely written though. Had I not known in advance what the plot was I would have had a hard time figuring out what I was reading about. The post-apocalyptic landscape is described but it is hard to understand what have happened. But the book will probably get to that though. Here is an excerpt from it for you to read:

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.

There are a few difficult words in this novel but I look them up if I can find a computer. When I first started reading I reacted to the way McCarthy uses the apostrophes. Or should I say how he does not use them? I did not know you could write "hadnt" and "wasnt". Did you know?