yes they can (yes we can)

"We just shot three of them down," reads the note.


---------------- Through the early part of the movie Charlie Wilson's War, Congressman Wilson several times expresses the idea that if "we can just help them shoot down the helicopters, everything's going to start going our way!"


A lot of us in the U.S. in the 1980s were not thinking about having a "way" in Afghanistan -- having things "start going our way" ... Afghanistan was the Soviets' blunder.  Their bullying blunder...  The situation depicted in the film was not on the mental "radar screens" of most Americans in the 80s.  That is what the CIA is for.  To see what they can get done for world peace and freedom when most people ... "aren't looking," so to speak.


In the movie, this is when the Afghan freedom fighters start, finally, to "shoot down the helicopters."  After you see these guys using the big gun -- up across one shoulder ... and then when the murderous helicopters blow up, BOOM, mid-air, the Afghan shooters jump up and down and laugh and rejoice together. 


(They're used to being out-gunned; this sudden success amazes them.)


CUT TO an Int. scene at the Capitol Building; Congressman Wilson's aide Bonnie Bach (played by actress Amy Adams) walks down a long hallway,





her high-heeled pumps making time, her hair swinging from side to side.  The brisk walk builds to the moment when she arrives in the room where Charlie Wilson is.  He's in conversation with two other men; she hands him a note.





"We just shot three of them down," it reads.


He's so happy he lets out a shout, and hugs her.


And  this is the turning point, when the Afghan fighters end their journey toward what experts around the world saw as their inevitable defeat, and begin their long road to success in ousting the communists from their country.





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