I enjoyed the movie Charlie Wilson’s War when it came out a couple of years ago. It was based on a true story about Democratic Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson and his covert dealings helping anti-communist Muslims in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. Wilson was able to navigate diplomatic bear traps, getting cooperation from traditional enemies. The result was arms and support to Afghan rebels who were fighting the brutal occupation of their country by then Communist Russia.
The arms did the trick, the Soviets suffered a major defeat. The movie strongly implies that the eventual fall of the Soviet empire was a direct result. The cautionary end of the film has a frustrated Wilson trying in vain to get humanitarian aid to the newly liberated Muslim country. The moral of the story was that the last bit of unfinished support was all it would have taken to have prevented the 9/11 attack on the United States.
There was no doubt that the message was upbeat. Communist tyrants had been beaten by a brave but oppressed people wanting no more than freedom.
After the 9/11 attacks, a different group of Muslim freedom fighters who had long battled against Communist oppression were in the struggle of their lives. A Turkish ethnic section in northwest tip of China, Xinjiang, was pretty much autonomous until they were invaded by the Communists in 1949. They have been fighting back ever since.
Communist China made a satanic proposal to the United States that we should all be ashamed of. They would support the US led War on Terror if the United States would perform one small favor in return. We were to declare the troublesome Turkish ethnic group of Xinjiang to be a terrorist group.
Well, what’s in a name? We said okay. The Muslim freedom fighters, called Uighurs (WEE-ghers) would be called terrorists. No action would be taken against them by the US, NATO, the UN, or our allies. And China would go along with the crushing of al Qaeda. Not a bad deal, right?
Bounty hunters in Afghanistan turned in 17 Uighur refugees. They had gotten training in how to fire guns from a tribal group who later allied with al Qaeda. They had been designated as terrorists, so we put them into our new prison at Guantanamo Bay. And there they have been ever since.
Uninformed politicians of both parties still casually refer to them as terrorists, but they have been cleared of any terrorist acts, and are fairly militant in their support of the United States. Aside from the designation “terrorist” and an unverified incident involving an attack on a television set (no kidding – a television set) pretty much everyone in government has long said they are innocent of pretty much anything except wanting to be free of Communism.
These are militantly Pro-American freedom fighters. We carry the beacon of freedom. But Charlie Wilson is gone and nobody has taken his place.
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