Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History – George Crile

Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History – George Crile, Atlantic Monthly Press (2003) 550p. (S) * (revised edit)

This hagiographic drivel attempts to lionize a man, Charlie Wilson, who could not have more flaws. While it is true that Crile has a “warts and all” style to his writing, there is, nonetheless, an adulatory tone that pervades the entire work, leaving the reader to think that where Charlie Wilson went, no mere mortals tread. And while Crile tries to paint Wilson as some latter day anti-establishmentarian rebel, the facts would seem to speak otherwise. “Wilson had a reputation for never having met a weapons system he didn’t like . . . ”(p.249) among other things, as well as for being rabidly pro-Israel. So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Wilson fit very smugly in the pocket of the military-industrial-complex, so that wherever the big money was in special interests and campaign contributions, Wilson was there. Consider as well, that as a member of the House appropriations committee, and later the House intelligence committee, Wilson placed himself at the nexus of covert foreign policy and the funding it requires. In this given milieu, and with the backdrop of the Cold War, can one really say that Charlie Wilson, with the indispensable assistance of a CIA officer named Gust Avrakotos, really stuck his neck out when advocating for the Afghan mujahideen? “ . . . [The Afghan mujahideen] ‘freedom fighters’ seemed to be loved by everyone on the Hill. No one spoke ill of them, not even the press.”(p.340) With a free pass from the press and a compliant Congress, can one really say that in such an environment the risks that Wilson was assuming in securing funds for the Afghan resistance, were at all that great?

Then there is also, of course, the “blowback” (a.k.a. unforeseen consequences) aspect of the 1980s U.S. Afghan policy. Here Crile devotes seventeen pages in his epilogue, in drawing the links of the likes of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (one of the most fanatic of the Islamic fundamentalists being funded by U.S. taxpayers in the 1980s, but who at the same time was the most favored by the CIA and ISI [Pakistani intelligence] because of his reputation for being the most ferocious of fighters among the mujahideen) and Osama Bin Laden, to the tragic events of 9/11/01. Apparently, even after that day, Wilson remained unapologetic about the policy he so ardently undertook in the 1980s, continuing to fund the mujahideen even after the Soviet withdrawal. While Crile traces Wilson’s penchant for championing the underdog to his experiences as a child and to the teachings of his mother, one can’t help but think that there indeed must be something else that causes a man to so avidly advocate a policy of war. That missing element could quite possibly be the absence of any direct combat experience in Wilson’s formative years. Given this absence, even though Wilson did serve in the Navy, there is perhaps an allotted leeway that permits the mind to wonder and thus romanticize armed conflict. (One could trace a similar trend among the hawks that reign today in the present Bush administration.)

There is also the question of what impact did the Afghan war really have on the Soviets. Did it really cause, according to Wilson, the Berlin Wall to fall “‘ . . . a good five, maybe ten, years before it would have otherwise.’”(p.523) This is a point of historical speculation that naturally could be endlessly debated. However, one question that rarely gets asked, and one that even Crile neglects to raise, is whether the Soviets had more business being in Afghanistan than the U.S. did during the 1980s. Yes, there was a brutal occupation by the Soviets and there was president Carter’s “Presidential Findings” that authorized the CIA to launch war in Afghanistan, but given that the proximity of this country is much closer to the Soviet Union than it is to the U.S., can the Soviets be blamed for their incursion? Both Wilson and Avrakotos are quoted as saying they saw Afghanistan as payback and retribution for Vietnam. Is this really the appropriate lens with which to look upon U.S. policy in Afghanistan? Clearly, there were plenty of entities, in many different countries, that according to Crile, were making plenty of money on the war. What does this say ultimately about Wilson’s efforts, especially given the present day “war on terrorism”?

Finally, there is a quote early in this book that despite its limited relevance, as it refers to one of Wilson’s girlfriends, Joanne Herring, can’t be overlooked. “Something about Texas and its oil heritage seems to permit its citizens to reinvent their histories and to carry out their lives as if they were part of an ongoing theatrical experience.”(p.65) Is there a better single sentence synopsis for characterizing the “born again” life of George W. Bush? This comes with the reviewer’s apologies to the reader for stretching this review’s topicality. However, he considers it his duty to bring to the reader’s attention good writing, when and where ever it may occur.

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 – Steve Coll

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 – Steve Coll, The Penguin Press/Penguin Group, Inc. (2004) 695p. (S) ** (revised edit)

Sometimes in politics you reap what you sow. In terms of foreign policy, this is known as “blowback,” (see Charlmers Johnson’s book of the same name). Any discussion of the Afghanistan of the 1980s and the correspondent U.S. foreign policy of that era should place this word, “blowback,” (i.e. the corporeal form of Osama Bin Laden), at the fore of any serious analysis. Unfortunately, this is not the path taken by Steve Coll in his rather dense tome of 695 pages.

While the CIA was hot to arm and train Afghan Islamic fundamentalist fanatics (including the likes of Osama Bin Laden) to the teeth, not surprisingly it was the Soviets who raised alarm bells. “[Eduard] Shevardndze had asked for American cooperation [in 1988] in limiting the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.”(p.168) Apparently then Secretary of State George Shultz was sympathetic, but no higher level Reagan officials ever gave much thought to the issue. In 1992, Najibullah, the Afghan communist president, presciently stated: “‘If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a center of world struggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a center of terrorism.’”(p.234) Clearly, what the Soviets experienced first hand in their war against the jihadists made the threat of Islamic fundamentalism all the more real and tangible, much more so than in the case of the CIA which principally operated through a Pakistani proxy. Meanwhile, the naïve and zealously ideological Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations thought they could control the dynamite they so foolishly mishandled. Also completely overlooked by Coll is how poppy production and the export of heroin in the 1980s in Afghanistan - and its resumption in the present day - relates to U.S. foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and beyond.

As Coll moves closer to the events of 9/11 that mark the end of his book, he seems to drift further from an accurate rendering. Eager to lay the bulk of responsibility for 9/11 at the feet of the Clinton administration and its often ambivalent foreign policies, Coll seems to forget the obvious fact that the events of 9/11/01 in actuality, not theory, occurred on the watch of Bush Jr.’s administration. Nowhere in Coll’s analysis is there mention of Colleen Rowley and her repeated attempts to reach FBI headquarters regarding the “twentieth hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui. Nor is there mention of the now famous Phoenix memo warning of possible hijackers training at a flight school, nor mention as well of the pair of future hijackers in San Diego that were on the FBI field agents’ radar. Instead, Coll writes, “The [CIA’s] Counterterrorist Center’s failure early in 2000 to watch-list two known al Qaeda adherents, with American visas in their passports appears, in hindsight, as the agency’s single most important unforced era. If it had not occurred, the specific attacks that were to unfold with such unique destructive power in New York and Washington might well have been prevented.”(p.572) To pin the possible prevention of the 9/11 attacks on this singular occurrence is on its face absolutely absurd.

Equally erroneous, Coll states that “The deputies’ [of the Bush Jr. administration, including Paul Wolfowitz] decision to make Bin Laden their top priority marked a change from the Clinton years . . . ”(p.559) Anyone who has read Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies and/or Ron Suskind’s/Paul O’Neill’s The Price of Loyalty knows that from day one the Bush administration was itching for a showdown with Iraq, especially Wolfowitiz, among others. In fact, the Clinton national security team sought to brief the incoming Bush officials on prospective terrorist threats, but the arrogant latter would have none of it, as Condoleeza Rice downplayed the significant threat of Osama Bin Laden.

If the reader is looking for a comparable text in size and length on the events in the run-up to 9/11, he/she would do better by reading Peter Lance’s 1,000 Years For Revenge. Lance gives a more comprehensive view of the 9/11 terrorists themselves and the FBI’s attempted pursuit of them, something that the CIA obsessed Coll completely neglects. Clearly, as his seventy-five pages of notation would indicate, Coll has put a lot of research and effort into his work. Too bad this reviewer is unable to recommend it.

What Liberal Media: The Truth About Bias and the News – Eric Alterman

What Liberal Media: The Truth About Bias and the News – Eric Alterman, Basic Books/Perseus Book Group (2003) 322p. (S) ****

The myth of the so-called liberal media (SCLM) is powerful and pervasive among the conservative dominated corporate media. Taking this myth head-on, Alterman has carefully exposed the fraud behind the individuals and institutions that constantly cry foul that they are in some way being slighted or victimized by the “liberal” media. Beginning with the more obvious blowhards of the hyper-reactionary media (usually found in talk radio), the likes of which include Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Chris Matthews, and Mike Savage, Alterman’s analysis still is able to find grace and accuracy, even when his subjects are anything but. One thing that is missing, however, is an explanation of why in 2002 and early 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the political books on retailers’ shelves were virtually entirely from the extreme right (i.e. Kenneth Pollack and others) that were then advocating for the invasion of Iraq. Why, at that critical moment in our history, was their such a paucity of progressive voices in book bound print? (Granted, there were many voices in the periodical print and online that deserve recognition, whose against the grain courageousness rang true and resolute.) It was only until later, after the invasion had been initiated that books from the left, like Alterman’s, became widely available. While he writes that, “the neoconservative domination of the U.S. media’s foreign policy debate is hardly atypical,”(p.18) Alterman fails to explain why this is so. Only in later pages do we learn of the massive conservative infrastructure of think-tanks and well funded foundations, that so seamlessly moves staggering amounts of financial resources in support of conservative causes.

After taking us through the subjects of the U.S. punditocracy, race and economics in the media, Alterman takes a look at the anomalous 2000 U.S. presidential election. “It is not entirely fair to say that the qualified candidate and Vietnam veteran [Al Gore] with the popular positions representing the successful administration actually lost to the relatively unqualified one with the unpopular positions, who ducked Vietnam [George W. Bush] and did not have much of a record. Al Gore did win the popular vote . . . ”(p.148) Given the disaster we presently find ourselves in in this country, these are important basic facts to be reminded of and to remember. Alterman goes on to write, “ the . . . conclusion that the disparity in coverage [of candidates Gore and Bush] was due to a political bias in favor of Bush and against Gore, is one [Alterman] is not comfortable making.”(p.158) But seemingly conversely he writes later on that, “[T]he contrast between the treatment of [Bush] and vice-president Cheney have received and that meted out by the media to the Clintons is enough to make one wonder if the media have not made some sort of silent pact among themselves to torment only Democratic presidents.”(p.223) But in his final pages, Alterman seems to find his way clear to a more lucid answer, “ . . . conservatives also know that if the press is effectively intimidated, either by the accusation of liberal bias or by a reporter’s own mistaken belief in the charge’s validity, the institutions that conservatives revere – the military, corporate America, organized religion, and the powerful conservative groups themselves – will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence.”(p.266-267) And since it is usually the most financially successful institutions in our economy that have the disposable resources to dump into conservative causes, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there is such a grave imbalance in funding and momentum that tilts right. To quote a figure from another era, in order to get to the real answers, one must simply “follow the money.”

Alterman has written a solid, well documented work (there are forty pages of notation alone). It is essential reading and a good first step to anyone interested in the long struggle to “take back the media.”

The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity – Joseph Wilson

The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity – Joseph Wilson, Carrol & Graf Publishers/Avalon Publishing Group, Inc. (2004) 513pp. (S) ****

Ambassador Joseph Wilson is at the center of a controversy that two and a half years later, continues to brew in Washington. The leaking of his wife’s identity, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative is a crime that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is still investigating. Having already dispensed with an indictment of vice-president Cheney’s chief-of-staff, Lewis Libbey, one can only hope that Fitzgerald is just starting to warm up his legal guns, in spite of the many near Byzantine twists and turns the investigation has taken. Why, for instance, is the man who actually did the leaking in newspaper print, somehow miraculously immune from a subpoena summons? Is it because Robert Novak belongs to the good ‘ol boys neo-con club? Has he cut some kind of deal with Fitzgerald? Surely an efficient way to get to the bottom of things would be to put the squeeze on Novak, the man who committed the actual crime, not journalists like Judith Miller, who essentially, because she never went to print with anything, has been prosecuted for what for the most part amounts to a mind crime (i.e. not publishing a name that was given to her unsolicited). Whatever some may think of her incredulous pieces of dubious sourcing on Iraqi WMD, surely this is not the way to make her answer for that. What a strange world we live in, indeed, one that would do George Orwell proud, or as Joe Wilson has observed, when it comes to the Bush Jr. administration, down the rabbit hole we go.

That said, we find in Joseph Wilson anything but a flaming liberal, as his ardent belief in the necessity of the first Gulf War reflects. “ . . . in [Wilson’s] judgment Desert Storm was fully justified . . . ”(p.174) “Desert Storm was a just war, sanctioned by the international community, and supported by a broad multilateral coalition.”(p.467) (Not to pick too many bones, but this reviewer would take humble umbrage with such an accounting, since the “liberation” of a sovereign monarchy strains credulity.) Wilson himself was left in charge of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad when ambassador April Glaspie left for vacation, and thus earned the distinction of being the last American Saddam Hussein dealt with face to face with before the war. Wilson was also credited with securing the release of many Americans from both Iraq and Kuwait. For his service in Baghdad, Wilson was given personal recognition by president George H. W. Bush. It goes without saying that such goodwill from the father didn’t carry over with the son.

Wilson identifies the South Carolina Republican primary in the 2000 presidential election and the Bush campaign’s personal slandering of Senator John McCain, as a formative experience. Earlier, Wilson had been a campaign donor to Bush the junior, despite having done work with Al Gore’s senate office in the mid-eighties and having a generally positive experience. But after South Carolina, Wilson concluded that “[T]he Bush campaign tactics in the South Carolina Republican primary represented the worst in American political discourse and should have been repudiated by [Bush]. Campaigns rooted in the exploitation of people’s fears, prejudices, and hatreds prevent us from identifying and electing our most capable leaders.”(p.279-280) Later, when the election hung in legal limbo, Wilson “was appalled by the gutter tactics of the out-of-state rabble that bullied public servants and intimidated them into stopping the recount of ballots in Miami-Dade county.”(p.282) Not surprisingly, Wilson ended up joining the Gore campaign in an advisory capacity.

In his latter pages, Wilson saves space to level his gravest charges toward the neo-con set. “This Bush [Jr.] administration clearly operates on the principle that it is acceptable, and indeed desirable, to shift the debate from the issue to the person, to divert attention from the facts, and to confuse rather than enlighten the American people. This administration knows no such thing as a fair fight; all that counts is who wins and who loses.”(p.341) Wilson also observes how the administration is over-taxing our domestic resources: “at a time when we must be vigilant against the possibility of further attacks on our own soil, every call-up of National Guard or Reservists means that more of our first-responders are over there instead of over here, where they should form our first line of homeland security.”(p.383) And then there is this “ . . . [T]here is no doubt that the administration cherry picked, exaggerated, and manipulated information often no more credible than gossip to fabricate a justification for war.”(p.414) “ . . . they [neo-cons] have actively subverted the intelligence process by inserting their own ideological biases into the analysis.”(p.431) Wilson’s recommendation is for Bush to clean house and fire all the neo-conservatives within his administration, a small group of ideological zealots he believes number no more than fifteen individuals. “This would clear the administration of parasites who are loyal only to their agenda and who have found the Republican party a willing host for more than twenty years.”(p.431) Of course, Wilson has serious doubts if Bush is so intended, since he himself may already be sold on the neo-conservative agenda. As to the future and the war in Iraq, Wilson hypothesizes that the actual break-up and “balkanization” of Iraq may in fact be part of the wider neo-con agenda, an objective that would keep formerly one of Israel’s greatest adversaries, broken and divided, and weakened by in-fighting. If such is the case, then surely we face a tumultuous road ahead.

Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk – Maureen Dowd

Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk – Maureen Dowd, Putnam/Penguin Group (2004) 523pp. (LF) ***

Bushworld is, like The Great Unraveling, Backstory, and Chain of Command, yet another collection of previously printed material, bound together in a single volume. Whether you find Dowd to be more tongue-in-cheek than simply sharp tongued, there is surely enough sarcasm to go around in these pages. Her targets, (principally the Bush administration, though there are a few barbs at Kerry’s expense) are more than well deserving of her abuse. What the reader will soon come to discover, however, is that Dowd is usually more concerned with style than substance, even though many of her criticisms of the Bush administration are dead on target. Unlike her colleague, Paul Krugman, who as an economist is able to back his words with the authority and insights of his occupation, Dowd is at heart a rhetorician, more interested in striking the right pitch in her prose than necessarily making the most cogent argument.

One area in particular where this reviewer must take great exception to Dowd is when she describes the present administration thusly: “this group [Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle] is far more conservative . . . than [Bush Sr., Scowcroft, Powell, Baker].”(p.290) What, exactly, is conservative about launching aggressive war using defensive forces (a.k.a. the Guard and Reserve) while financing such radical adventurism with three tax cuts, ballooning deficits and a growing federal debt, while making us all the more vulnerable to Chinese creditors? These policies are anything but conservative. Conservative would be things like a balanced budget and isolationism, while maintaining a strong defense, not over-extending it and running it into the ground. Only when we begin to call a spade a spade and start to look beyond the moderate window-dressing, will these radical neo-fascists be exposed for the extremists they genuinely are.

Dowd keeps repeatedly striking important themes, like the absence of Iraqi WMD, the absence of Osama, etc. On July 20, 2003 she wrote, “the list of evils the administration has not unearthed keeps getting longer – Osama, Saddam, the anthrax terrorist – as the deficit gets bigger.”(p.379) Three out of four are still relevant, and of course, her observation regarding the deficit is still quite pertinent. One thing that can be said for Dowd is her consistency. By hammering away repeatedly at the same themes, she is doing her best to write a history counter to what the perpetual Bush Wurlitzer would have us believe. If journalists indeed are the ones who write the first pages of history, then we must necessarily be thankful for her services.