Government Ethics and Charlie Wilson's War
I would like to nominate the new film <i>Charlie Wilson’s War,</i> a Mike Nichols film starring Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Julia Roberts, for the City Ethics <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/Top10+Ethics+Films">Top Ten Ethics Films list</a>.
Charlie Wilson is a multi-term congressman whose principal activities are drinking, diddling, and (a distant third) deal-making. He happens to also become the major force behind U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union, which is the background story of the film.
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First, this film shows very clearly the most essential conflict of interest there can be for a politician, one that no law can do anything about. Wilson says that his constituents care only about guns and something else (I forget, but the particular issue isn’t important). As long as he takes the right stand on these issues, he’s free to do anything he wants. Or nothing.
His goal is to keep a very low profile, so that he can enjoy his life, evade controversy, and keep getting re-elected. Like some other Hanks’ characters, Wilson has not grown up, and there’s nothing in representing people in Congress that requires this. He is the furthest thing from a public servant, but he doesn’t do much harm, either.
Wilson’s principal value is personal. However, the war in Afghanistan isn’t his way of making history – most of what he did was secret. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with his constituency. He is compelled to act, for personal reasons, and yet he acts sincerely and effectively, at least until the end, when the Afghans are no longer of any use to American foreign policy. Then he finds his personal cause is of no meaning to anyone else in Congress.
For the chair of a Defence subcommittee in the House (on which Wilson sat), the principal value is also personal. Only when he goes to Afghanistan and sees the suffering for himself is he willing to support more aid for the Afghans. And even then, only when he has been assured that a blind woman who has been raped and put in prison (instead of the rapist) is let out. This act of injustice sticks in his craw, and his craw is essentially American policy. It doesn’t get any more personal, or well-meaning.
The CIA’s principal value is institutional: to keep everything secret. Being covert is more important than anything, far more important than the Cold war or the suffering of the Afghans. The public interest is not something seriously considered.
These ethical issues are not central to the film, but they’re there throughout it, they’re well portrayed, and they contrast effectively with the film’s moral issues, that is, Wilson’s love for liquor, cocaine, and women. We are intended to excuse his moral flaws, but not his and the other characters’ ethical flaws. They are both human flaws, but one begins and ends with personal desires, and the other goes to the heart of the characters’ responsibilities as public servants, which often conflict with their personal desires.
The odd hero of the movie is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s CIA agent, who refuses to be diplomatic (to deceive, to posture) and who thereby makes a lot of enemies in the CIA. Sitting on the Afghan desk is a punishment, but it gives him the freedom to act, since at least at first no one pays attention.
He too has not grown up, but he is a rebel whose loyalty is neither to an institution nor to himself. He is, in an odd, gruff way, a true public servant, in the Spencer Tracy tradition.