The Aftermath of Charlie Wilson's War

“These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the endgame.” Congressman Charles Nesbitt Wilson (D, TX)

Charles Wilson was a Texas Representative who had successfully won twelve consecutive terms as a Democrat in a heavily Republican region of Texas. His explanation for this was the same as for why he was the best man to lead congressional support for Operation Cyclone, a CIA covert operation to supply the Mujahideen with the appropriate firepower to take out Soviet transport and assault vehicles like helicopters and jets during the Afghan-Soviet War: he represented a district where the people only wanted their guns and low taxes, so he was one of the lucky few who could say “yes” to controversial programs.

Charles Wilson, working along with CIA officer Gust Avrakotos, had managed to increase the appropriate funding for the Mujahideen after having been named the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which helped in drawing the Soviet Union into what Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski called “Russia's Vietnam.” The mission was so successful, the CIA presented Wilson with an Honored Colleague Award, the first civilian to have received this.

Although the mission was smashing success, Wilson lamented the aftermath, even going so far as to proclaim that 9/11 was part of its blow-back. Why is this?

After the Soviets had pulled out of Afghanistan and left the remaining fight to the PDPA in 1989, the next few years were marked with a civil war that eventually secured the Taliban's power and prominence. Osama Bin Laden, after receiving funding and training by the CIA had transformed his Mujahideen faction into what is now Al Qaeda.

Afghanistan had suffered greatly during the war with fatalities exceeding one million, five million fleeing to Pakistan, two million displaced and homeless within the country, and over four million wounded or maimed. When you compare these losses to Afghanistan's original pre-war population estimate at 15 million, one can understand Wilson's plees for post-war aid, which unfortunately fell on deaf ears.

Promises were made to the Afghans during the war that aid would come to help rebuild their country after the war was over and won, but the Soviet Union had shortly collapsed after their pull-out and the interest in Cold War financing was waning drastically.

Charles Wilson had warned that leaving the Afghans with such a weak infrastructure would only lead to their bitterness against the Western World, seeing no difference between the Soviet infidels and the American betrayers, thus an equally brutal or worse regime to that of the PDPA would most likely fill the power vacuum. Those who opposed Wilson's strategy had been affixed to only perceiving an underdeveloped nation like Afghanistan as a threat to American security when given Communist support, and not a threat unto itself.

This very opposition, who could scrounge up a billion dollars for guns but declined a million for schoolbooks, also felt that the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative, a procurement to prevent the proliferation of mass-death weaponry like nuclear missiles from ex-Soviet republics, was a waste of money. The irony is that underfunding of both initiatives spurred the greatest potential threat to America's national security during today's War on Terror: Islamic Militants with WMDs.