Blowback...

Chalmers Johnson writes about Charlie Wilson's war in Afghanistan as portrayed in George Crile's book, and Tom Hanks's new movie:

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...he never once mentions that the 'tens of thousands of fanatical Muslim fundamentalists' the CIA armed are the same people who in 1996 killed nineteen American airmen at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, blew a hole in the side of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000, and on September 11, 2001, flew hijacked airliners into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon."
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[edit: here's more from Kenneth Turan of the LA Times:]

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By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 21, 2007
"CHARLIE Wilson's War" is an anachronism, the wrong movie at the wrong time. Not only does it tell its tale in a style that feels dated and artificial, the story itself focuses on events that history has overtaken. The moving finger has written and moved on, and not even the combined star power of Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, writer Aaron Sorkin and director Mike Nichols can do anything about it.

Based on the bestselling book by George Crile, "Charlie Wilson's War" does tell a most unusual 1980s true story. It relates how Wilson, a pleasure-loving congressman from Texas (Hanks), joined forces with a wealthy and reactionary socialite (Roberts) and a grumpy CIA operative (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to use billions of dollars in U.S. and Saudi aid to arm Afghan mujahedin, or "freedom fighters," and oust the invading Soviet Union.

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Though "Charlie Wilson's War" makes a few attempts near the conclusion to reference the chaos that is to come, they are too little and too late. Harder to deal with is the fact that, because Muslims around the world, as Crile notes, thought the victory in Afghanistan was the work of Allah, "we set in motion the spirit of jihad and the belief in our surrogate soldiers that, having brought down one superpower, they could just as easily take on another." The rest, as they say, is history.

The American Empire and "Blowback"

I love America: the diversity of people and ideas, the geography, the natural beauty, the opportunity, among many other aspects, make this a great place to live; and a great place to fight for the future of - a better future without the threat of global economic hegemonists barking for more bloodletting. I love America, but not Empire. I have a vision for a future America that is free of imperial pursuits. That's why I am posting this:

Chalmers Johnson
Empire v. Democracy
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I had set out to explain how exactly our government came to be so hated around the world. As a CIA term of tradecraft, "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to, and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically to retaliation for illegal operations carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. These operations have included the clandestine overthrow of governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign countries, interference with the economic viability of countries that seemed to threaten the interests of influential American corporations, as well as the torture or assassination of selected foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at least originally, secret meant that when retaliation does come -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is incapable of putting the events in context. Not surprisingly, then, Americans tend to support speedy acts of revenge intended to punish the actual, or alleged, perpetrators. These moments of lashing out, of course, only prepare the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.
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