February 15, 2008
THE PEOPLES WAR
Nice one. Mr Camel got hold of Charlie Wilson's War. I'm going to read it with a careful eye on the relationships between Texans and Islamic warriors. I'm wondering if these two tribes might have the solution to all this, or might be an even more scary alliance than anyone could imagine.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
and i will read it, too.
i've read so much about the damn jihad my brain has rotted.
that ghost wars is like pretty much definitive, and afghanistan: the bear trap by that former isi brigadier who ran the afghan bureau is full of inside stories too.
strange obsession. To what end?
fuck knows.
it does make me see some childhood memories in a completely different light.
Wise Up on Charlie Wilson's War, Dave:
From an Asian Times review of the excellent 'Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story' by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould
...
A chronically disinformed US public should leap at the chance to familiarize themselves with an honest overview of their country's historically scandalous involvement in the region.
Despite Afghanistan's recent return to the spotlight, few among the public realize the full extent of the US's historical meddling in Afghanistan. Sadly, many Americans will believe the version of events that were popularized by George Crile's book-turned-Hollywood film, 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 (New York: Grove Press, 2003).
Crile's account presents an ahistorical blend of fact and fantasy as it romanticizes the largest covert operation in US history during the US-Pakistan-Saudi Arabian-financed and armed proxy war against the Soviet Union from 1979-1989. It is this collective propaganda-imbued blindspot that Fitzgerald and Gould attempt to reveal and counter. As Gould stated in an interview with Asia Times Online, Charlie Wilson's War "is a complete flip flop of the reality".
It's still a very entertaining read, though. And as for the film version, well, what can you expect from Hollywood. You notice how Avrokotos and Charlie Wilson get precisely one mention each in Ghost Wars.
Post a Comment