Charlie Wilson saw it coming

 Afghanistan is a tragedy, but most of my grieving was done years ago, when we went in.

As a young newspaper reporter, I covered Charlie Wilson, a beloved rascal and congressman from East Texas. He represented a vast district in the pine forests. It’s mostly woods, farms and small towns. There were few reporters to keep track of Charlie. Charlie enjoyed that fact.

But Charlie sought the newspapers out when the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan in 1979. Charlie hated the Soviets.

Charlie was jubilant. He thought the Soviets would ruin themselves in Afghanistan.

One of the maxims of modern military strategy is that it begins with anthropology and sociology. Charlie would have scoffed at the language. But he understood that the people of Afghanistan did not want the Soviets there and did not want to adopt their way of life. They could not possibly be won over, which begs the question of what the Soviets had in mind when they talked about a winnable war.

You might remember the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” starring Tom Hanks.  Charlie really did go across the border to shoot at the Russians. He really did get Stinger missiles to the “freedom fighters.” He hoped the Soviets got mired in a long, bloody, hopeless war. He couldn’t quite believe that when the Soviets checked out of that disaster, we checked in.

The tragedy was foreseeable — even to people in the pine forests of East Texas, not exactly a place that provides itself in the sophistication of its foreign policy analysis.