Charlie Wilson's War

During the 1980’s East Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson led a successful covert operation in history. With his two ally friends Gust Avrokotos an ex CIA agent and a beautiful wealthy Joanne Herring were able to make an unlikely war occur and achieve their goals. The Soviet began to occupy Afghanistan and crimes and injustice acts were committed to the Afghani people, unfortunately people throughout the nations were not taking this in consideration but rather Joanne Herring a female non-politician kept an eye. She approached Charlie Wilson and arranged for him to visit the president of Afghanistan, when he went his blindfolds were removed and began to see the reality. His heart felt the pain and his humanitarian instinct kicked in. He was able to defeat the odds. The Afghani were able to get rid if the reign of the Soviet Union with the surprising help of Israeli providing arms. When analyzing the film Charlie Wilson’s war we are able to interpret certain occurrences with our political sociology knowledge. Two features that I discovered was the removal of direct barrier and encouragement. By apply these aspects we are able to interpret the film with more facility.

Wars are a very costly therefore Charlie had to encourage several political leaders and capitalist that this war was positive and that their funding was essential for the war to continue. Encouragement includes government and non-government that target parts of the population and provide incentives to facilitate their participation in the polity (Nueman 2005, 147). Thus Charlie Wilson, Gust, and Joanne were not a government organization and were in quest to persuade certain region of the population, the elites. With the help of the elites Charlie Wilson’s war is all possible. One particular character was influenced by Joanne she is a religious person therefore she used her religious beliefs to persuade him that it is a religious war and fortunately it worked.

The second aspects is the removal of direct barrier. The removal of direct barrier is an inclusion mechanism that ends blockage to a groups entrance to the polity and expand access for the group that is not fully included in the polity(Nueman 2005,150). The direct barrier for the Afghani was the Soviet Union. The Soviet had control of Afghanistan for it continuously bombed and attacked its people. An example that was a shock to me was the tactic of confusing the children. They would place ‘shiny toys’ along the ground but in reality it was a bomb, the explosion of the bomb mutilated and scarred the bodies of these infants. Therefore with the removal of the direct barrier Afghanistan had hope of becoming a protected and free nation.

Charlie Wilson’s War was a collection of actual events that occurred. I felt compassion for the film and felt that all is possible but it raised a question in my mind. What occurred to that relationship we had with Afghanistan? If Charlie Wilson were to go in 2008 would he be respected or be terrorized?