Blogging Charlie Wilson's War: How a self-made thug helped bring down the Soviet Union

Couple hundred pages into George Crile's excellent Charlie Wilson's War and I still haven't gotten a fix on Charlie Wilson.

I can see the man, all six-feet-four inches of him made even taller by the heels of his cowboy boots, reaching his big hand out for a drink, reaching the same hand out to greet a friend or a voter, forgetting he has a drink in it, his loud voice booming, as his head's swiveling around to follow the behind of a passing pretty woman.  But that's easy to see because it's a caricature, a self-drawn one Wilson cheerfully lived out, but still a sketch not a portrait.  I don't feel as though I'm getting to know the man, and I suspect that it's because Crile had a hard time getting to know Wilson too.  Someone like Wilson would be hard to get to know for the simple reason that he wouldn't know himself.  What he knows and knows well is the self he would like to be.

Charlie Wilson appears to be a romantic and an idealist.  Like all romantics, he's a story-teller first and a personal historian second, which is to say the drama of any narrative is more important to him than the actual facts.  Not that he'd lie, just that he'd have a tendency to glide over the details.  And like all romantics, the main object of his romances is himself.  He's the creator of a personal myth.  And the myth has taken him over so completely that he can only talk about the idealism and the thinking that drove him to scheme and plot and maneuver and risk his life and his career and the security of the United States (World War III with the Soviets wasn't an impossible outcome of what he was up to) to help the Afghani mujahideen defeat the Russians and drive them from their country as arising out of the myth of Charlie Wilson.

He can only say in a lot of different ways that he did what he did and thought what he thought and believed what he believed because that's the kind of man Charlie Wilson is.  In short, the romantic's answer to the question, Who are you? is always I am who I am.

Why did Charlie Wilson do what he did?  Because he's Charlie Wilson.

Probably doesn't help that he was an alcoholic too and that made a lot of what he did reflexive rather than reflected upon, before or after, and it's left him somewhat fuzzy on the details of some events.

All this makes him a colorful character for Tom Hanks to play in a movie (Wilson probably saw himself as if he was playing himself in a movie) but I would guess made him a frustrating source and an elusive subject for a journalist.  It makes him an object of guesswork on the part of a reader.  It makes a reader have to treat him as if he's a fictional character, which---and that's my point---he is.  Charlie Wilson made himself up.

Of course, to an extent, the people in any book, fiction or non-fiction, are invented characters.  Novelists are consciously making their characters up.  But historians, biographers, and journalists make their characters up too, they make them up out of facts, but the way those facts are chosen and assembled is an act of imagination.  Writers of non-fiction can't claim that their stories are true, only that their stories are as close to what they think is the truth as they believe they could get.

So, for all intents and purposes, trying to understand a real-life person through what you read about him in a book like Charlie Wilson's War is as much an act of literary interpretation as trying to understand Hamlet or Mr Pickwick.  Which is why I don't feel too bad about doing what I am about to do:  Write about a real live human being as if he's a fictional character.

While Charlie Wilson is still something of an enigma to me, Gust Avrakotos, the rogue CIA agent played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the movie, who was Wilson's legman and muscle and, to a degree, puppetmaster, in this real-life adventure tale, seems very familiar to me, because he's an all-too-familiar type of American prince, the self-made thug who can do no wrong in his own eyes.

Avrakatos grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in a Pennsylvania steel town, the doted-upon, but not spoiled, son of Greek immigrants.  His father, another self-made thug, was a marginally successful then failed businessman who had a very personal sense of Right and Wrong.  Right was whatever he needed to do to get ahead and take care of his family, Wrong was anyone or anything that got in the way of his doing either.   He passed on this simplistic and ego-driven morality to his son.

As a kid, Avrakatos was smart, talented, hard-working, a good student---he was valedictorian of his high school class and graduated from college summa cum laude.  But he had a rebellious streak that arose out a sense of entitlement and an anger at life's unfairness.  He didn't really care that life was unfair, generally, only that it was unfair to him.  He'd been taught by his parents that he was different, special, and he couldn't forgive life for not recognizing what he was.

The Hercules-King Arthur-Superman-Luke Skywalker myth has at its core the fact that every now and then, for no apparent reason, Hero-Kings are born not in castles but in huts and cottages.  The happy idea behind the myth is that those Hero-Kings, born with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, will grow up humble, with a respect for and a sympathy with the common folk among whom they were raised and they will go on to use their powers and abilities to help and protect others.

But in real life the working out of the myth depends on the Hero-King being raised by a Merlin, Jonathan and Martha Kent, or Uncle Ben Parker who will teach him that with great power comes great responsibility.

I've seen it happen, though, young heroes and heroines being raised by people intent on rubbing the specialness right out of them, either out of a misguided sense of doing the right thing by them, like Luke's Uncle Owen who was so determined that Luke not turn out to be like his father that he was keeping him from turning out anything, or for selfish and egotistical reasons, like Arthur's foster father Sir Ector, who saw Arthur as a threat to the future glory of his own son, Kay.

Whatever their reasons, these adults---who can be teachers as well as parents or other guardians---work hard to make sure the talented children in their charge don't "get above themselves."  Some of those children never do.  They hide their lights under bushels their whole lives.  Others rebel, and not all rebels are heroes and heroines.

But I suspect that more often the young hero or heroine is a temptation to the adults raising them to aggrandize themselves.  Stage mothers and fathers are of this type.  The stands at every sporting event are full of them.

And I suspect that even more often the young heroes and heroes strike the adults who have them in their charge as gifts.  They are enchanted by their child's specialness and they dote upon it, feeling a responsibility to make sure the special child has a special future.  They wind up not teaching the child that he or she has a special destiny or a special responsibility but that he or she has a special reward ahead of them.  They teach them they are privileged and entitled.

Avrakotos' parents apparently lived out the good and the bad sides of the myth.  They taught Gust discipline and the value of hard work.  They taught him not to take anything for granted, least of all success, but they also impressed upon him that he was special and privileged and, as long as he worked for it, he was owed.  They taught him Right from Wrong, but it was his father's mixed up sense of Right and Wrong.  He internalized the sense that Right was what was good for Gust Avrakotos and the people he loved and wrong was whatever hurt them or got in their way.  They taught him a sense of duty and loyalty, but they also taught him that his first duty was to take care of himself and see to it that he became what he was destined to become.

Avrakotos didn't turn out to be a cold-blooded narcissist.  He was passionate, large-hearted, idealistic to a degree, and like Charlie Wilson a romantic who although he saw himself as the hero of his own romances still wanted to be a hero.  But he projected himself into everything and onto everyone, and where he could see himself he could see goodness and righteousness and where he could not make out his own reflection he saw threats and enemies---he was paranoid by temperament and his training and experience as a spy made him even more so.

Self-made men and women are self-made only to the degree that they have worked hard to put their talents and abilities to work.  A lot of people who get described as self-made are just lucky.  Gust Avarkotos was definitely a self-made man.

What turns a self-made person into a self-made thug is a belief that the rules that apply to ordinary persons don't apply to them.

This is a temptation for most self-made people, I think, because, generally, the rules that regular people live by are rules for hiding your light under a bushel, for not putting your special talents and abilities to work, for not getting ahead, especially if you're poor or working class.  The rules---be polite, don't talk back, don't question authorities, do what you're told, follow instructions, wait your turn, and keep your head down---are rules for getting along in the middle class.  They are rules for staying right where you are, which is fine if you are born into the middle class, but for the poor and the working class they are in effect rules for failure.

The self-made, then, of any class, those who through their own efforts and diligently applied talents, learn pretty quickly that there are times when the rules have to be broken.

Self-made types become thugs when they decide that the time for breaking the rules is any old time they feel like it.

Through the example of his father, who was known to beat up on customers who owed him money, by temperament, and by through his training and work as a CIA operative, Avrakotos learned that the times when he had to follow the rules were fewer and far between than for the rest of us.  He became a self-made thug.  He was more of a part-time thug, compared to other self-made thugs, but he was still a thug.

When self-made thugs appear in their usual habitats, the business world, the world of sports, the arts---areas of human endeavor where rampaging egos are the norm and bad behavior is routinely excused by success---they are destructive types, wrecking anyone and anything that they think has gotten in their way.  But Avrakotos found his way into a career where thugs could be heroes.  The work of the CIA during most of the Cold War was creative destruction, and Avrakotos was very, very, very good at it.

Then the Agency committed the to an Avrakotos unforgivable sin.  It turned on and betrayed some of Gust Avrakotos' friends, which, as far as he was concerned, was the same as turning on and betraying him.

The CIA was, proabably still is, the Ivy League types who run it and their chosen favorites who staff its key positions.  It was a club of gentlemen and lady spies who tolerated Avrakotos's presence more than they welcomed him into the club.  But then Avrakotos never really wanted to be part of the club.  He couldn't make out his reflection in many of the Ivy League dilletantes who were nominally his superiors.  His loyalty to the Agency was really loyalty to the few men around him he admired and to his own assets and operatives and a to the United States, to which he was loyal mostly because it was the nation that had had the good sense to allow Gust Avrakotos to be born there.

This is how it happened that when Charlie Wilson needed a man like Gust Avrakotos, a competent and dangerous thug who wasn't bound by the normal rules, who was connected but not beholden, who could identify with the Afghans and their cause more strongly than he identified with other Americans, particularly American politicians and bureaucrats, who was brave, cunning, well-disciplined, and a little bit nuts, there was a man like Gust Avrakotos on hand.

Recommended further reading:  The late, great Molly Ivins' review of Charlie Wilson's War.  The book, not the movie, because she didn't live to see the movie, goddammit!

Comments

[Mike Schilling]

like Arthur's foster father Sir Ector, who saw Arthur as a threat to the future glory of his own son

In my favorite version, T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone (not the Disney abomination), Ector is a good father to his foster son. Wart loves both Ector and his older brother Kay, and wants nothing more than to become Kay's squire. After the sword and stone business, what with his father and brother both kneeling to him, pledging him their service, and calling him "my liege" instead of "Wart", Arthur realizes that his childhood has ended and his life has changed forever.

And he cries inconsolably.

[tdraicer]

Lance, have you read the book Legacy of Ashes? If not, you should-very revealing of the CIA (and American history the last 60 years more generally).

[JD]

I really, really miss Molly Ivins.

[Batocchio]

That's a really interesting take. I've yet to read the book. One of a long list to tackle. I wrote two posts in the past month on the film and the history behind it, though - an earlier version of the script I read mentioned bin Laden, for example. Anyway, interesting stuff on Avrakotos.

[Chris the Cop]

I finished the book about 10 days ago - went to see the movie but it was sold out so we saw the National Treasure sequel instead (C-, compared to the original). I think by the end, Lance, you'll have a full portrait of Wilson in all his complexities and contradictions: a self-destrustive social liberal who couldn't keep his zipper shut but who recognized just how murderous and monstrous Soviet Communism had been and was at that time. This was not, incidentally, an unheard-of viewpoint of mainstream Democrats in the pre-McGovern 50s and 60s.

I disageee with some protions of your conclusions on Avrakotos,. but I'll give you a chance to either amend or affirm them of him once you finish the book.(Big of me) I just found the whole tale-warts and all-absolutely astounding. The description of Congressional infighting and horse-trading was fascinating and rang completely true. Afterwards, I couldn't disagree with Crile's contention that the operation really was "the greatest CIA operation in history."

[Molly]

Charlie Wilson's War, the movie and the book, are rousing good tales but provide maybe 10% of the full story on Afghanistan. Steve Coll's Ghost Wars is a dense, comprehensive tale about Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USSR, Bin Laden, the CIA, ISI, and a multitude of people on all sides who stumbled or connived their way into the disaster we have today. Coll offers a more measured take on Wilson and his adventures and how they fit into the greater picture of the fight against the Russians. Ghost Wars begins and ends on Sept. 10, 2001, for reasons you'll understand if you make it to the end.

[CJColucci]

That Molly Ivins is dead and a lot of people I'm feeling too charitable to name are alive and have big megaphones is just wrong.

[Kit Stolz]

I miss Molly Ivins, but nonetheless found it easy to root against Wilson and Avrakotos. Sure, they helped defeat a Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, but they also empowered and armed to the teeth a bunch of warlords and religious zealots totally opposed to the 20th century. This is a good thing?

Are we so quick to forget the past that we cannot even connect the dots between the Wilson, the rise of the Taliban, and 9/11? I'm sorry, but I guess I'm just not enough of a cynic to get a lot of laughs out of that.

[tori]

Extremely well written and compelling analysis of not just a few historical characters, but a study in human nature as well. What you wrote here about Avrakotos could apply to my family, my brother especially, whose actions are often questionable but whose intent is always honorable. This ethic was not only taught by my parents, but by the teachers of our time who taught us always to question authority, challenge the establishment, and make decisions for ourselves rather than blindly follow what we were told. Is that romantic? Perhaps. Is that common? I think so. Is that what lies at the heart of most Americans? Most definitely.