Deja Fu

Author: George Crile
Pages: 560
Year Published: 2003

It seems a lifetime ago since the Soviet Union ceased to exist. A lot of that has to do with what happened on September 11, 2001, but even before then, the world had changed drastically in the wake of the Cold War.

However, in 1979 the world was still very much within its grip and shortly after Christmas, the Soviet 40th Army invaded Afghanistan, ostensibly to protect the communist government there which had been fighting a civil war against other tribal groups within the country. This got a lot of people’s attention. Jimmy Carter described it as the greatest national security threat since World War II and it apparently moved the normally conciliatory Georgian to a hawkish footing. The United States boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow, ended grain shipments to the U.S.S.R., and, through the CIA, began to fund the mujahadeen – the Afghan resistance.

The original plan was to use the mujahadeen to bleed the Soviets and make Afghanistan their own Vietnam. Provide just enough weapons and support to keep the Afghans at a nuisance level for the Red Army. However, all of that was going to change when a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, larger-than-life Congressman from the Texas 2nd District was drawn into the picture: Charlie Wilson.

George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War covers the efforts of this representative (and many others) to transform the American action in Afghanistan from a low-level nuisance war to a real guerrilla war with everything needed to force the Soviets out. Along the way, we are introduced to a cast of characters that would be right at home in an absurdist comedy: Gust Avrakotos – an acerbic, street-smart CIA case officer who lands the Afghan assignment while trying to avoid being terminated for insubordation; Joanne Herring – a born-again Christian Texan socialite with personal connections to the president of Pakistan; Mike Vickers – a young ex-Green Beret and one of the CIA’s experts on irregular warfare; the Defense Minister of Egypt, an Israeli arms manufacturer, and others.

And the best part about the entire thing is that it all took place, and grew to become the largest covert war in American history with an annual budget of $500 million (matched dollar for dollar by Saudi Arabia), all without Congress really being involved as a body because of the way money is appropriated for national defense. Remarkably, at the same time all this was happening, the House of Representatives was shutting down the Reagan administration’s every effort to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

I thoroughly enjoyed Charlie Wilson’s War. It’s an entertaining, well-written, account of a piece of Cold War history, covering an event to which most of us really never paid attention – the only time in its history the Red Army had been defeated.

-K