News organizations, film-makers, and journalists in general have a maddening tendency to personalize everything and render the most complex issues into extended personal anecdotes. It’s a method for storytelling tried and true, and it’s obviously one that generates sales since it is so prevalent in the 
mainstream media. This sometimes manifests itself in the form of stories that focus on a reporter’s experience rather than whatever that reporter is witnessing. (Gary Trudeau has offered an extreme example of this with his journalist character Roland Hedley and his perpetually inane Twitter feed.) There’s also the phenomenon of framing complex historical events as being largely the product of one person’s efforts. Probably the best example of this would be Reagan purportedly bringing down the Berlin Wall through the awesome power of speech. And there’s “Charlie Wilson’s War”, the namesake of which – former Texas representative Charlie Wilson – just passed away this week.
This is nothing new. I suppose it just irked me when I heard a story about Wilson on NPR’s Morning Edition this week. And though it’s appropriate that they would do some kind of memorial of the guy, it just seems bizarre that, in the context of all that is happening in Afghanistan right now, they would be talking about the long pre-history of the current conflict with the guy who played Wilson in a movie (Tom Hanks). It’s possible that NPR has plumbed the depths of our involvement in Afghanistan on other occasions, but I certainly haven’t heard them do it, and I listen quite a bit. Not as easy a story to tell, for sure, but probably well worth the broadcast time. No offense to the relatives of Mr. Wilson, but listeners would be better served to hear about that than about the late Congressman’s exploits with Russian supermodels.
Whatever his role may have been in providing fuel to the Afghan war effort during the 1980s, this was not the work of one man, any more than the fall of the Berlin Wall was the result of one speech. This ongoing crisis was many, many years in the making, beginning in earnest with the Carter administration and the decision to begin backing the fundamentalist factions within Afghanistan because it was felt that they would prove a longer-term, more pernicious problem for the Soviets than any secularist elements. Money began flowing on a larger scale in the Reagan years as the CIA embarked on what was up to that time the largest operation in their history, conducted in cooperation with the Pakistani ISI and the Saudis. Fanatical fighters were recruited all over the Muslim world, including most notably Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. So we all had a piece of this one, and now it’s got a piece of us.
Like most wars, this is a lot bigger than any biopic.
luv u,
jp
The thing I’m seeing (as opposed to the thing I’m sayin’) is this massive crack in the foundation of our beloved Hammer Mill. Never noticed it before, actually. Funny what you run across when you’re snooping around the place, looking for discarded foodstuffs (abandoned sandwiches, leftover fruit, etc.). Pretty soon you’re picking up on all of the stuff that’s been going on without your noticing it. I always thought that Mitch Macaphee’s experiments in plate tectonics might have some regrettable consequences. Now I can see that I was right. What has Mitch been working on, specifically? Funny you should ask. It’s this thing he picked up on in one of Matt’s songs, a little number called “Why Not Call It George?” The chorus goes like this:
Now, I would be the first to caution people against taking song lyrics seriously. After all, look what happened with that Manson thing – and all because he was reading too much into Tommy James and the Shondells’ Crimson and Clover. (You know… “Crimson” – blood! “Clover” – on the graves of the dead! “Over and over” – MANY dead!) Well, Mitch has gone and done it again, trying to recreate the mother of all continents through some strange electromagnetic process that only HE understands. Hard to believe he is the inventor of something as, well, intellectually challenged as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). (Don’t tell Marvin I said that. Just attribute it to someone else, please – he’s very sensitive lately.)
working on a few songs… actually a sackload of songs. Not doing the lounge lizard thing any more. No sir, the next time we perform, it will be our own ridiculous tunes, not someone else’s. And we will have a powerpoint presentation handy to explain each one, so no one makes the mistake of misinterpreting them like Manson did with “Crimson and Clover” or whatever the hell song. Matt and I have been working furiously on this project, now that we know the potentially disastrous consequences that may result from mere un-footnoted performances. What the hell – we played “Why Not Call It George,” and now the Earth may be destroyed. Who knew?
Haiti. The story is starting to get old, I can see, even though many are still waiting for help, not getting enough food, can’t find a doctor, etc. A large part of the problem is our obsession with security. I’m afraid we’ve been an occupying power for a few too many years; it has had its effect, just as it has on the Israeli Defense Forces. We take a military approach to everything, and we trust no one. The U.N., for the most part, is in the same boat, driving around in secure vehicles even before the earthquake hit. Combine this with the general decay of our emergency management capabilities over the past decade and it’s not hard to understand why even with a significant commitment of resources, people in Haiti have been waiting a long time for a helping hand.
going to kill the “Top Taliban Leader” or “#3 Al Qaeda Leader” by remote control before we realize that these guys are almost always replaced by someone younger and more militant, and that the human cost in terms of civilians killed and wounded in these operations generates many more recruits than can ever be discouraged by martyring militant leaders?