Because of his black vote bit, I never liked Charlie Wilson, though we went all out on his support for the Afghan rebels. When I saw the trailer for the movie which showed his telling the incumbent that the blacks had thrown him out of office, I didn’t want to see the film.
To me, watching one of the Southern traitors in action in the 40s and 50s is just too much to ask. I finally forced myself to watch a documentary on him and I wish I had done it back then. It turns out he got the blacks out to vote as a teenager because the incumbent bastard he put out of office had murdered his dog in an agonizing way. Wilson then found the blacks were useful and used them to get his congressional seat.
In the interviews with him he never once bragged about helping create a New South and being in tune with the Future. His only concession was that blacks were underdogs, like the Afghan rebels.
I could easily have become his drinking companion through our common fight and my buddy Congressman Ken Holland. Because of my proven populist talent, a lot of Democrats wanted me in their offices. It’s just as well I didn’t become Wilson’s buddy::
1) I would have been among all those beautiful women Wilson was famous for hiring;
2) My wife was a Judo expert..
One thing the documentary talked about was something I have told you for years about the Intelligence Community. All the regular CIA people fought us all the way. What saved it was one holdout.
I have pointed out at length that the Ivy League culture of the CIA had one serious problem:
Sometimes they had to go around the professional bureaucrats and use somebody who was unreservedly on OUR side agasinst the Reds.
As I said, us rednecks and Micks and Cubans HAD to be used sometimes, but they held us at arm’s length with one limb and held their noses with the other.
Actually, it’s a lot like the Idea Chain I use here. Respectable conservatives use my ideas after they have cleaned them up and I take it for granted that it will be a cold day in Hell before they let it be known it came from me.
In the few cases where they are AWARE of it.
I don’t WANT this to be known. It would DESTOY the Idea Chain if this stuff was traced back to me.
Likewise, the Micks and Whitakers and Cubanos did things and they found somebody in the CIA culture to take credit for them.
It was real shock when, a quarter century after the fact, this very reality became a major theme of the documentary on Charlie Wilson’s War. The CIA man who threw himself against the CIA culture and onto the side of aiding the Afghan rebels was a “working class” son of Greek-Americans.
He gave us what we needed. CIA Ivy Leaguers considered him a mole who snuck in under false colors and turned out to be one of THEM, the Micks, etc. Boy, did the documentary EVER make that clear!
Once aid to Afghan rebels had gotten out of their control, the CIA, “smelling victory,” assigned this Greek guy to a location out of the fight and took credit to their Ivy Leaguers. The documentary SAID that! It was a decade before the whole thing got so public he had to be given a CIA award.
#1 by Dave on 06/14/2008 - 1:03 pm
There is always what is seen and unseen. And what is unseen, especially by those on our side, that Political Correctness is no friend of nonwhite people.
Reagan spent a lifetime having his nostrils filled with stench of labor union politics. He was so hard barked and cynical about it, no one ever knew.
But unlike the Politically Correct (Clinton, for example) Reagan was steadfast in his heart of decency, and aimed to mitigate suffering.
Contrast this with Clinton’s masterful sense of perversity in the “who gets credit” arena. And when confronted with any critical decision asked himself what course of action would inflict the maximum suffering and ruin. No one was ever the wiser.
That’s why Giuliani (who gave a shot at busting Wilson) threw the (colored) street vendors off 125th street, an action fully consistent with his oft-repeated premise that the darkies are teachable.
Many lives are ruined in these types of trajectories.
And the colored vendors getting thrown off 125th street is of a whole cloth with the way the downtown investment banks rig the settlement of international trade. Don’t think that there is no connection.
Reagan stood against this type of crap. That is why it is entirely consistent that the American darkies considered him an enemy (but not Afghan rebels).