Charlie Wilson's War Quotes

“But the terrible truth is that the group of sleeping lions that the United States roused may well have inspired an entire generation of militant young Muslims to believe that the moment is theirs.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“On every front, the CIA was turning its guerrillas into a far smarter and more lethal fighting force.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Operating in the black market is like trying to get laid in a city you don't know. In a strange city, if you have enough money, you're bound to find something, but there might be a disease contracted, you might get rolled or arrested, and there's no telling how much it will cost. With you wife, its predictable and in a steady quantity.”
― George Crile III, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of our Times

“Osama bin Laden was one of those volunteers who could frequently be found in the same area where Charlie had been Haqani’s honored guest.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“What no one involved anticipated was that it might be dangerous to awaken the dormant dreams and visions of Islam. Which is, of course, exactly what happened.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“At Friday prayers, the mullahs were inflaming their followers with accounts of Western NGO volunteers teaching Afghan women to wash with soap.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“That year, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; adding insult to injury, Gulbuddin and Sayaf—the mujahideen leader closest to the Saudis, whose men had guided Wilson into Afghanistan for the 60 Minutes shoot—both publicly sided with Hussein against the United States. Their subsidies, however, continued.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“His model for enlightened leadership had always been the men who led America during and after World War II, when the United States defeated and then rebuilt Europe and Japan with the Marshall Plan.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“The justification for the huge CIA operation had been to halt Soviet aggression, not to take sides in a tribal war—certainly not to transform the killing capacity of these warriors.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“But early that morning, when Sweetums called Charlie’s hotel room, Snowflake answered the phone.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“For anyone trying to make sense of this new enemy, it would seem relevant that for over a decade in the 1980s and early 1990s, the U.S. government sponsored the largest and most successful jihad in modern history; that the CIA secretly armed and trained several hundred thousand fundamentalist warriors to fight against our common Soviet enemy; and that many of those who now targeted America were veterans of that earlier CIA-sponsored jihad.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“I didn’t know what to think, but figured if I got downtown I could learn more.” By then Wilson had retired from Congress and was working as a lobbyist, with Pakistan as one of his main accounts.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Never in history had a nation accumulated such dominance over the rest of the world as the United States had in the decade following the Soviet collapse.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Once the accord was signed, both superpowers would be prohibited from any further arms shipments. Zia wanted to make sure that his (and the CIA’s) Afghans were in a position to do in the Russian Afghan surrogates. But that morning the mujahideen’s secret stash at Ojhiri was wiped out—thirty thousand rockets, millions of rounds of ammunition, vast numbers of mines, Stingers, SA-7s, Blowpipes, Milan antitank missiles, multiple-barrel rocket launchers, mortars.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Varennikov had been incensed that month to discover that Reagan had just sent a guided missile, a smart bomb, into Qaddafi’s tent.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“In stark contrast, the Soviet veterans of the Afghan war did not exist.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“The source of the disaster was a stockpile of some ten thousand tons of ordnance haphazardly stored at the Ojhiri military camp, just between the capital and Rawalpindi.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Charlie wasn’t exactly a conservative. He was, in fact, a liberal when it came to domestic matters—civil rights, women’s issues. But on gun control, anti-Communism, and defense, he was a hard-liner second to none.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Zia agreed to receive a delegation, and Charlie began twisting arms, calling members’ wives, promising the experience of a lifetime. Finally he put together a delegation of seven key members and their wives, who’d agreed to spend Thanksgiving in Pakistan.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Charlie had not hesitated to throw himself into the defense of the program. Still, for just a moment, he did find himself first perplexed, then furious at the idea that the CIA had been helping Khomeini.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“The dirty little secret of the Afghan war was that Zia had extracted a concession early on from Reagan: Pakistan would work with the CIA against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and in return the United States would not only provide massive aid but would agree to look the other way on the question of the bomb.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“For one thing, India had the bomb. It had exploded a nuclear device back in 1974, and no one doubted that it had the ability to wipe out Pakistan.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“He was quite convinced that the Americans hated and feared his religion and that the Agency was helping Pakistan only because of its Cold War with the Communists.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Fernandez wasn’t a blue blood; therefore, he was expendable. Sure enough, two months before his fiftieth birthday, Joe Fernandez was fired. At fifty he would have qualified for his pension, but now the Agency took the position that it had no responsibility for this man with the seven kids and the twenty-five years of service.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Avrakotos knew too much about Israel’s complicated relationship with Iran—how the Mossad had “had half of the mullahs on its payroll” before the revolution.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“it would not only lead to the release of the hostages but to the beginning of a new strategic alliance that would prevent the Soviets from getting a foothold in Iran.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Gust was still in charge of Iran then, so he was one of the first to be told of the White House’s idea that it was time to try to cut a deal with Khomeini’s Iran.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Gust took him to dinner and offered a toast to him. And then Mike left the Agency for the Wharton business school.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“Avrakotos and Dunn might have pushed to get him promoted to GS-12 due to the nature of his work, but it would be at least five years before he could expect to make GS-13. According to the career management officer, Vickers would have to complete two overseas tours of two years each before he would be eligible for promotion to the next level.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War

“He’d even consulted the Agency’s great expert on Saudi Arabia and Iran, George Cave, who’d advised that because of Muslim prohibitions on usury, the Agency probably should not put the money in an interest-bearing account.”
― George Crile, Charlie Wilson's War