Witnesses

Cartoonist Carl Giles drew a picture in the early 80's. A Britsh my-lordy, complete with pith helmet, is reading the paper, as is his long-haired hippie nephew. Both papers read AFGHANISTAN. The nephew says "so - those treacherous tribal riff-raff are now our noble and loyal allies, eh, uncle?" And Uncle is reaching over to strangle him...

Welcome to the days of "freedom fighters" who would be Taliban, evil Russians who are now our uneasy allies, and many more dead people than the script planned when they made this classic time-capsule documentary. Martyn Burke, the extremely talented Canadian filmmaker who gave us everything from "Pirates of Silicon Valley" to the last remake of "Animal Farm"(!), set out to show the good guys & bad guys of 1988. And he succeeded all too well. I wonder how this would play out now to a post 9/11 audience? History or propaganda?

(Or, like in the movie "Charlie Grant's War", you pretend everything after didn't happen?)