Charlie Wilson was a member of the US House of Representatives who in the 1980s lobbied intensively for arming the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union. He personally secured a lot of the funding for the Afghan Mujahideen from the CIA and the US Department of Defense.
Mr Wilson was elected in Texas, in a constituency with probably not too many Afghans in it. He could have concentrated on tax 
policy, gun control or health reform. Yet he sensed that it was the right thing to help freedom fighters against a dictatorship. He did the right thing.
I wish the parliaments of North America and Europe would have members today who cared about the fight of the people of Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship. Where are the Charlie Wilsons of today?
Unfortunately, too many people are worried about the economic problems here in the States, and equate ANY foreign policy work with the less-than-spectacular results in Iraq and Afghanistan. And those folk elected a bunch of IDIOTS in 2010. And the rest of the world had better hope that President Obama wins re-election, because if Romney gets in, the only foreign policy work he’ll do is to attack Iran for the Israelis. (And before sending me that hate Email, bear in mind I’ve been a lifelong conservative – up until a few years ago, when the Tea Party twips emerged.)
By the by, that’s a LOVELY Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk III in that photo. ;)