The myth of Charlie Wilson is recounted in George Crile’s  book Charlie Wilson’s War and  popularized in “a major motion picture” starring (improbably and unconvincingly) Tom Hanks.  Crile’s subtitle sums up the myth:   “The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times.”  In a language more sober than publishers permit, it is the morality play of how a corrupt playboy politician was so touched by the sufferings of the oppressed Afghan people that he used every device of a dirty political process to support the struggle of Afghan “freedom fighters” against the USSR.  Ironically, the end result was an increasingly militant Islamic regime that gave shelter to Osama bin Laden.

So far as I know, Crile has it right.  Charlie Wilson may well have  tried to do one decent thing in his life.  He should have stuck to booze and broads.  There is nothing ironic in the outcome of US support for the Afghans.  Our  CIA not only paid, trained, and armed Islamic militants; we actually supplied them with radical imams who whipped them up into a frenzy and not just against the Russians but against all non-Muslims.  Anyone whose mind had not been corrupted by the evil notion that all religions worship the same god, any intelligent person not in the CIA or the US State Department, anyone not Zbigniew Brzezinski or Charlie Wilson could have predicted the results.

The conventional view, of course, is that Afghanistan blew up because after the defeat of the Soviets, we did not rush in to win the hearts and minds by squandering tax dollars on hospitals and schools.  In other words, Muslims only become terrorists because they are uneducated—like Osama, like the students who crashed the planes on September 11.

But, then, should we expect Charlie Wilson to know anything about Islam, Afghanistan, or, indeed, anything but crooked politics and warm-hearted women?  Wilson was a small-town Texas boy, a student at Sam Houston State (Dan Rather’s Alma Mater) before going on to the Naval Academy, where he finished eighth from the bottom.  But even if he had finished first in his class, it is unlikely that he would be mentally equipped to understand what he was getting into.  Our service academies, which have traditionally done a brilliant job of producing military officers, do little or nothing to give the students the humane education that is essential to understanding the world or the moral education that is necessary for them to understand their duty, when they are faced with tough decisions.  This complaint has been made many times,  most notably by a distinguished Annapolis graduate, Admiral James Stockdale.

So, a corrupt politician and a rogue CIA agent conspired to change not only US foreign policy but also the political shape of the world.  And where, exactly, did they get the right to do this?  A CIA agent who makes policy can only be regarded as a traitor, at least in a moral sense.  But what about a politician who uses his contacts, who wheels and deals because he has a private cause?  What can be said of him except that the blood of tens of thousands of human beings—Americans, Afghans, and Russians—is on his hands.

Of course, it is always said, he didn’t know, could have no way of knowing what would happen.  Did he try?  Did he learn the languages, study the history, do anything, in other words, other than work himself into a sentimental fit over the sufferings of people who were of no concern either to him as a member of Congress or to the American people?  The justification for this operation is that two administration, Carter’s and Reagans, approved.  But what has that to do with Charlie Wilson, who aggressively promoted Operation Cyclone, an operation whose consequences he did not and could not understand.   Carter and Brzezinski, Reagan and Casey have a great deal to answer for in approving such a covert operation, but Charlie Wilson was not working for either administration:  He was a free-lance sentimentalist, assuming a moral responsibility he had no business taking on.

In The Morality of Everyday Life, I put forward the analogy of the practical  joke.  The joker is someone who interferes in other people’s lives without the necessary justification.  He tells someone they have won the lottery, just as a jest.  If his victim has a heart attack or goes out and spends money he does not have, the joker is responsible because he did not have to interfere in the other person’s life.  In fact, it is generally a good idea not to.  When a sentimental do-gooder makes the decision to help others, he assumes responsibility for the consequences.  When aid programs turn out to be harmful–as they usually do–the philanthropists, in or out of government, must bear the blame.

It is bad enough that the American people are stupid enough to send oversexed and undereducated crooks to Congress, but if the Charlie Wilsons and Ted Kennedys would only stick to stealing and whoring, we would be a whole lot better off.  Lord save us from the ministry of the reformed rake or the policies of a cheap politician turned sentimental philanthropist.

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