Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts,along with Philip Seymour Hoffman,make this pretty entertaining for the most part. The boozing "good time " Charlie with his glamorous office staff,perhaps providing the blueprint for "Charlie Angels"?. However although there are threads of truth about the covert War against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the story, i cannot find direct reference to Wilson. CIA Chief Bill Casey was the real-life "enabler" from what i can see. He ordered a guy called Milton Bearden (maybe Seymour Hoffman's character comes from him?) to take "stinger missiles and a billion dollars" covertly into Afghanistan..this is the period that people recount when they say,"well you trained the terrorists out there in the first place.." including Bin-Laden,and the grouping of fundamentalists now identified as "Al Qa'eda"... One of "Avacado's last lines about "the crazies flooding into Kabul" ,hints at the rise of the fundamentalists that the Reagan Admin were warned about,and of course we heard how Julia Roberts threatened to walk if they had pasted scenes of 9/11 into the film... Check out Adam Curtis' brilliant and impartial series..."The Power Of Nightmares"... Part two "the Phantom Victory" deals with this period, and refers to the perceived defeat of the Soviet Union claimed by both the USA and the Muhajadine ,when it was the Soviet Union that collapsed from within,like a house of cards....Now,there IS a story.
Like other Hollywood films that rewrite history,or tell it as a story of American heroism, i should really hate Charlie Wilson's War. However, there is enough of an accurate outline of events here,and the hokum is sufficiently enjoyable to stop that happening,and maybe it will prompt some interest in our near history,that shows just how we arrived at the incredible MESS we are now in.