14 March 2007
Charlie Wilson's Other War
It is a comfort that the biggest problem I have to confront this morning is the tinkering with time. It is after six here and the sky is still black as coal.
In the natural course of things, we should be awash in pale salmon light, but the Government has changed time, moving us west toward the Mississippi in a purely artificial manner that is causing our busy commuters to crash into one another in the darkness, which is quite real.
It is brilliantly bright in the late afternoon, which is supposed to encourage me to plow a field, attend a state fair or go to the drive-in movies, if any or those things existed anymore.
I am happy that I am not confronting the problems in the Tribal Areas of the Northwest Frontier, although you and I are, as a practical manner, through surrogates. Or worse, be beaten and jailed without process in the looking-glass land of Robert Mugube, who presides on an economy with 1500% inflation, and insists that everything is just fine in Harare .
Plus ca change, you know? These are the same two problems that existed when I was a newly-minted young naval officer, a fierce anti-communist not much different in view than the tall drink of water from Texas who stood at the front of the Holeman Conference room at the National Press Club downtown.
It was Charlie Wilson, big as life, the man who brought down the Evil Empire almost single-handedly, a roaring, brawling manifestation of American politics that is a direct connection with our bare-knuckled past. he was responsible for the great shadow struggle that took a few years of my life.
They also say that Charlie was responsible for the Islamic Bomb, and the Islamic terrorists erupted from Afghanistan after the Russian War.
I don't know that, any more than I know if the story from Las Vegas about the Congressman and the hot-tub and the two showgirls with the cocaine was true or not. Frankly, I don't care.
I had been invited to attend the big press annual press conference of the Civil War Preservation Trust. I open my wallet for that organization, since under the leadership of James Lighthizer the organization has shown a remarkable ability to leverage private donations and public funds to save historic properties associated with the Late Unpleasantness Between the States.
Jim looks more than a little like actor John Lithgow, and could be retired. Instead, he is working the system for something I think is important, and makes a lot of sense.
I'll give you an example. Down at Fredricksburg, VA , there occurred one of the most colossal military blunders in our history. General Ambrose Burnside sent wave after wave of young men against a sturdy stone wall atop Marye's Heights with a fierce band of Confederates behind it. Hundreds of them were killed on the spot and thousands wounded. Union Icon-to-be Joshua Chamberlain lay in a hollow with his 20th Maine and listened to the awful sound of them that night, moaning in thirst and delirium.
It is a powerful account of a pivotal struggle. You can visit the spot today, if you wish, and you can get a super-size slurpy drink, since it is a 7-11 convenience store.
Don't get me wrong. I like convenience stores and am four-square for our brand of rapacious capital and property rights. The deal is this, though. Historic sites can be recycled endlessly into the future, and 7-11's can be built anywhere.
The pressure on the sites around Washington is immense, and the open land is disappearing by the dozens of acres a day. Lighthizer says that the preservation mission will be done in the next decade, at least here. Selected bits of property will be either saved, or paved.
A binary prospect, simple as that.
Anyhow, it is a worthy cause, since I believe that a country that does not know where it came from it can hardly be expected to know where it is going. That said, I would not have re-arranged my schedule to attend the press conference, except for the fact that Charlie Wilson was going to be in attendance, and that made this a historical occurrence all its own.
I managed to find a parking place only a couple blocks away form the Press Club, which sits atop a proud tower next to the J.W. Marriott hotel. I was a little late, but the press conference was, too. Charlie Wilson, Texas Democrat, Congressman, boozehound and womanizer, ran the secret war against the Russians from his office in the Rayburn Building. They say that accompanied by beautiful women, he funneled funds from the Appropriations Committee through his CIA sidekick Gus Avrakotos to the Mujahadeen.
It is a fabulous story. The women were known as “ Charlie's Angels ,†and they were knock-outs. The book about it is known as “Charlie Wilson's War,†a rollicking tale of how Charlie brought down the Soviet Union by former 60-Minutes television producer George Crile.
I thought Charlie had to be dead, since the book left him on death's door, in need of a new liver. He quit Congress in 1996 after twelve terms, and I thought he must have been entombed right then. His being alive was surprising enough, but given that fact, it was only appropriate that the woman he was with was a stunner, impeccably dressed, skin like porcelain and hair sleek as mink with a jaunty red bow.
She obviously adored Charlie, just as I do. They say in the movie version he is going to be portrayed by Tom Hanks , and Julia Roberts will play the Houston Socialite Joanne Herring. I kicked myself for not being able to see if that was the woman at his side in the front row.
I do not know if Tom is going to be as unreconstructed a Confederate as Charlie is. Jim Lighthizer introduced him once the conference lurched into motion. Cameras lined the back of the wood-paneled room, and an African-American lady took still pictures as Charlie told us stories of his Confederate great-grandfather, which is the reason he feels so connected to this struggle against the forces of development.
His great grandfather had fought at Spring Hill in Arkansas, and been captured later at Vicksburg, where my great-great grandfather had been a teamster for the 72nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Charlie said that to the end of his days, his great-grandfather wore a silver bullet on a chain around his neck, and a poem that was buried with him.
Charlie does not think it has been published, and he had mixed advice on whether to read it aloud or not. He decided to do it, and damn the political correctness. His voice was deep and the words rolled like thunder across the east Texas plains:
"300,000 Yankees lay in the Southern soil
I wish we'd killed three million more."
He apologized for slavery, which he called the greatest abomination ever perpetrated on this continent. I had a good seat where I could check out the people in the audience. I happened to be next to someone who looked familiar, which is a hazard in a town so littered with the sedimentary layers of past Administrations. It came to me in the middle of Charlie's remarks: the man was Jodie Powell, press secretary to President Jimmy Carter, and currently the CEO of his own public relations firm, Powell-Tate.
Ms. Tate used to be press secretary for Nancy Reagan , which covers both ends of the client base. Jodie is from Georgia. of course, though he never went home after his time in the Carter Administration. So few ever do. Georgia is where my Confederate geat-great grand-uncle ended the war, serving under Texas General John Bell Hood. He did go home.
I did not see Ms. Tate in the crowd, since she was there right through the end of Charlie's great adventure. I wanted to lean over and ask Jodie if he was here because of his desire to preserve the battlefields, or whether it was to smell the acrid scent of gunpowder again from Charlie Wilson's war.
I did not get the chance, given the crowd. But thinking about it later, I realize that I smell it all the time.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com