War – Does It Ever End?

What do you think is the best all-time political movie? Some titles pop out: “All the President’s Men,” “Citizen Kane,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” – I’d like to suggest “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

This movie is genuinely funny, sad, heroic, features three of the best actors of our time – Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. But, I put it at the top of the list because of the lesson it ultimately tries to illustrate, which is we never really know the consequences of an action…until much later. And that should give pause to every politician for every program they ever thought to push to solve a so-called problem.

The story, in a nutshell, involves U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson funneling weapons to Afghanistan soldiers fighting the Soviets in the 1980s, turning that conflict into the Soviet Union’s “Viet Nam” – the one they couldn’t win and had to walk away from, after a huge drain on resources. This contributed heavily to the eventual break-down of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War. Awesome, right? Then we did not follow up with economic aid for the Muslims in Afghanistan and that set the table for the Taliban to take control and Osama bin Laden. Crazeeee, huh.

Hoffman’s CIA operative character shares an anecdote during the movie:

A boy is given a horse on his 14th birthday. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how wonderful.” But a Zen master who lives in the village says, “We shall see.” The boy falls off the horse and breaks his foot. Everyone in the village says, “Oh how awful.” The Zen master says, “We shall see.” The village is thrown into war and all the young men have to go to war. But, because of the broken foot, the boy stays behind. Everyone says, “Oh, how wonderful.” The Zen master says, “We shall see.”

Director Mike Nichols explains "You don't know good things from bad things when they're coming at you, and sometimes [you don't know] for 10 or 20 years, or ever — because good and bad things keep turning into one another.”

I know it’s not a popular stance, but I think it’s really important that after we’ve been involved in a conflict, we stick around and help re-build.