What 'Good Time Charlie' Brought

What 'Good Time Charlie' Brought

By Robert Scheer

Created Jan 2 2008 - 8:27am

- from Truthdig [1]

In the film "Charlie Wilson's War," the nitwit and deeply corrupt

congressman elevated to heroic status through Tom Hanks' ever-charming

performance has a meeting with Pakistan's then-dictator Zia ul-Haq in which

they broker a deal for a joint effort to "save" Afghanistan from the

Soviets. It's all great fun; the United States is, as always, on the side of

the good guys, in this case the Afghan mujahedeen, who later morphed into

the Taliban, hosts of al-Qaida.

The movie does not mention that the mujahedeen went to war against the

Soviet-backed government then in power in Kabul after the government

committed the unpardonable crime of allowing female students to attend rural

schools. The film casually notes that Gen. Zia, the U.S. ally in this effort

to bring "freedom" to Afghanistan, was, like so many of the movie's heroes,

a hard case full of contradictions, as exemplified by his having murdered

Pakistan's previous ruler, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Bhutto was, of course, the father of Benazir Bhutto, killed last week in

Pakistan. What is not noted is that not only Zia but every ruler of Pakistan

since him, including Benazir Bhutto, supported increasingly virulent forms

of Islamic fanaticism in Afghanistan, ending with the Taliban and the

al-Qaida terrorists who attacked America on 9/11, and that all rulers of

Pakistan enthusiastically amplified the successful effort initiated by

Benazir's now mythically beloved father to build an Islamic nuclear bomb.

I bring this up now at a time when the mass media is all too

enthusiastically celebrating Benazir Bhutto as the carrier of the democratic

ideal and apologizing for her bequeathing control over the party that she

ruled as "chairman for life" to her arranged-marriage husband, Asif Ali

Zardari, and their 19-year-old son, Bilawal. Before attending Oxford,

Bilawal spent his formative years in the United Arab Emirates, which was one

of the three countries to diplomatically recognize the Taliban (Saudi Arabia

and Pakistan being the other two).

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari doesn't seem familiar with the language used in

Pakistan or much else about daily life in the country, but his father, known

as "Mr. Ten Percent" for skimming wildly in Bhutto governments, assures us

that a few more years at Oxford is all the seasoning this future hereditary

democratic leader needs. It is hoped that the curriculum will include some

reference to Pakistan's key role, abetted by American visionaries like

Charlie Wilson, in spawning the current terrorism menace.

While the war on terror is used as the justification for U.S. meddling in

Pakistan's politics and wasting at least $10 billion in propping up the

Pervez Musharraf government, it is rarely noticed that the

general-turned-dictator and his key opponents are all more or less equally

compromised by their past support of the Taliban.

Nawaz Sharif, the religious-based opposition leader, is deeply sympathetic

to the fundamentalists, as are his Saudi backers, who bear the most

responsibility for funding Islamic extremism. But the "democratic

alternative" of Bhutto, whom the United States sought to broker back into

power, was as compromised on this issue of support for the Taliban as she

was on the matter of the Islamic bomb.

Indeed Benazir Bhutto, in her second term as Pakistan's prime minister,

oversaw funding of the Taliban and concealed that fact from the United

States. As reported in Steve Coll's authoritative book "Ghost Wars," in a

1995 White House meeting with President Bill Clinton, Bhutto "promoted the

Taliban as a pro-Pakistan force that could help stabilize Afghanistan. ...

During her visit and for many months afterward, Bhutto and her aides

repeatedly lied to American government officials and members of Congress

about the extent of Pakistani military and financial aid to the Taliban."

No doubt Bhutto had her virtues. Like many other reporters, I was mightily

impressed with her intelligence upon meeting her. I never bothered to look

too closely into the murders of her two brothers or the corruption charges

that swirled around her and her husband. Nor did I focus on the disparity

between the enormous wealth of the Bhutto clan and the miserable poverty of

most they claimed to lead with their populist politics.

But I am not a Pakistani voter, and neither are those geniuses in the U.S.

government who talked her into returning home without planning for the

consequences. So, what else is new? But there is something: This time, the

subject of our nation-building fantasy does have weapons of mass destruction

and, thanks to our previous military sales of advanced jets, the means to

deliver them. This time the blowback price of our incessant meddling could

prove quite high. Even Tom Hanks can't put a pretty face on that one.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson