Tom Hanks and Charlie Wilson Interview (page 4 of 4)

Living Up to the Promise

RD: There are more than 300,000 Afghans living in the United States now. What kind of response will the movie get from them?

Hanks: When we were shooting in Santa Clarita, it seemed like every Afghan in California came to watch. We had a guy who said, "I was 12 and we fought the tanks. I was given a weapon and we shot." Now here they are, opening stores and family businesses, trying to live up to the promise of the promised land in America. When Charlie spoke one day on the set, he said, "It might have been American money, but it was Afghan blood." People in the crowd were weeping.

RD: Could Afghanistan have become more stable after the Soviets withdrew?

Wilson: I think so. But once the Russians marched out, we came home. We should have stayed and built schools, hospitals, roads and an electrical system. All the things that America does so well, we could have done for a song. The people who were the most infamous triumphed because we didn't do anything at all.

RD: And now things aren't going so well there. The Afghan government is under attack from insurgents, and the Taliban is making a comeback.

Wilson: I praised the Bush Administration for rebuilding the infrastructure and dealing with the farmers. But when the Iraq war started, be it bad or good -- the real war was the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan -- it pulled the best CIA people and Special Forces out. The cost of reconstructing Afghanistan is nothing compared with the cost of this war.

RD: Charlie, you've said that Winston Churchill is your hero. Why?

Wilson: There's a story there. I used to drink a lot. One time I had barely gotten out of a DUI. They made me go to a class, at 7:30 on Saturday mornings, about not drinking whiskey. The teacher was a radical former drunk, and there's nothing more insufferable. At one point he said something, and I picked my head up. "Oh, I was just saying, Can you imagine what contributions Winston Churchill could have made had he not been an alcoholic?"
I said, "I guess it's all in the way you look at it. But he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote his first serious book in his 20s. He wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. And in his spare time, he saved Western civilization. So if it's all right with you, Professor, I'll take him drunk."

Hanks: Hearing you describe all that Churchill accomplished, maybe I need to start drinking. God bless you, Charlie Wilson. I wish you were still in Congress.

A Reader Wants to KnowMaggie Yost, from Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, asks: I saw your MySpace page. Tell me more about your electric car.

Hanks: I have two electric cars. One has 36,000 miles -- not a one from gasoline. That's with a car that has only 60 miles per charge. My new electric car gets well over 100 miles per charge, with power windows, air-conditioning, a great sound system and even a jack for my iPod. It's a Scion xB, converted to all-electric by the brainiacs at AC Propulsion, and it can go as fast as any gas car, to the point of the threat of speeding tickets.

From Reader's Digest - January 2008