Iraqi shoe-throwing incident proves Bush deserves getting the boot

December 16, 6:57 AMPolitical Issues ExaminerJudah Freed

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A shoe is raised during a protest against the
US President's visit in the Shiite stronghold of
Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday. Dec. 15,
2008. Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi threw
his shoes at President George W. Bush during
a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

Outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush has brushed aside the shoe-throwing incident  at a Dec 14 press conference in Baghdad as a childish attempt at attention-seeking by Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi, who's now detained in an Iraqi prison.

Clearly, Bush is missing the point. Distilled into this one incident we see the classic Bush blindness that's turned the United States one of the most disrespected and hated countries in the world. We also see the challenges facing incoming President Barack Obama in trying to restore U.S. standing abroad.

When hurling his first shoe at Bush, al-Zaidi shouted. "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!" When hurling his second shoe at Bush, he shouted, "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq."

Showing to another the bottom of one's feet or the sole of one's shoes is a serious insult in the Iraqi culture and across the region. Bush acted like he was totally unaware of the insult of having shoes hurled at him.

Bush dogged the pair of shoes just as Bush has dodged responsibility for the ruinous wars he'd launched in Iran and Afghanistan, wars that actually have made the U.S. less secure from terrorism today than before the 9/11 attacks.

"The war is not over," Bush told reporters at the press conference after signing the controversial "status of forces" agreement with  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which locks in the U.S. occupation of Iraq through 2011 (unless Obama can renegotiate the deal). Bush added that "the war "is decisively on it's way to being won."

Blindness. Absurd blindness. The Iraqi insurgency is on the verge of exploding into the worse violence we have seen there in years.

Bush likes to credit "the surge" with reducing violence in Iraq. In reality, the decrease in roadside and suicide bombings are chiefly due to two related factors.

First, Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a cease-fire for his irregular Shiite army from Sadr City in Baghdad, giving the largely Sunni government a chance to begin rebuilding the country. Unfortunately, al-Sadr has grown increasingly upset with the lack of tangible progress and continued discrimination against Shiites, so his cease-fire may not endure much longer.

Second, tribal leaders in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" and elsewhere have been receiving payments from the U.S. occupation forces to keep their towns and villages in line. The central Iraqi government of al-Maliki supposedly is going to take over these payments, but he's long opposed the pay-off scheme.

If the payments to tribal leaders cease, either from al-Maliki ordering them to stop or from corruption diverting the funds, the tribal leaders will lose their incentive for suppressing the undercurrent of rage at both U.S. forces and the central government. In other words, if the payments cease, as seems likely, there will be an explosion of violence throughout the regions outside of Baghdad.

Further, the new "status of forces" agreement calls for U.S. troops to withdraw from the major Iraqi cities by this summer as the Iraqi military and polices forces take over the patrols. Most independent analysts say the Iraqi troops either are not yet up to job or else have conflicting loyalties, so this means the cities in Iraq likely will suffer from a resurgence of insurgency as soon as U.S troops withdraw.

Therefore, when Bush glibly declares that the war in Iraq "is decisively on it's way to being won," he's either lying to himself or lying to the world, or both. The tragedy is that Obama will inherit this deception.

Meanwhile, nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq to fight a war that's opposed around the planet. More than 4,200 U.S.troops have died in the lengthy conflict, which so far has cost at least $575 billion since it began in 2003, and that's just in direct costs. Depending on the source, the number of Iraqis killed ranges from 100,000 to more than 500,000 lives, including widows and orphans.

So, with slightly more than a month before George W. Bush leaves the White House, his surprise visit to Iraq over the weekend revealed to the world his continued insensitivity. Bush seems to remain woefully ignorant about the real costs for the U.S. and Iraq from the Bush family's neocon vendetta against the deposed and executed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, who by 2003 no longer had the weapons of mass destruction used as a pretext for the invasion.

And during all these years, the real terrorist enemy, Al Qaeda, has been safely hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where U.S. troops cannot attack them head-on without sparking a war with Pakistan, a nuclear power.

Al Queda leader Osama bin Laden could have been captured or killed in 2002 at Tora Bora, we now know, but Bush refused to let U.S. troops press the attack despite being within 500 yards of the cave where we knew he was hiding.

Instead, we now have a situation where Bush is leaving a massive mess for his successor to clean up after him. While I'm happy to acknowledge that Bush's quick reflexes allowed him to dodge the shoes thrown at him, the blindness he's shown in his reaction proves that Bush truly deserves getting the boot.

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