Bush has Shoes Thrown at Him
I’m sure that the man in question would have liked to throw something else, but shoes are insulting enough.
Yesterday, George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq and declared that we are nearing the end of our “little adventure”. An Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, stood up during Bush’s joint press conference with Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki and threw his shoes at him.
In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted “this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” before hurling a shoe at Mr Bush which narrowly missed him.
Showing the soles of shoes to someone is a sign of contempt in Arab culture.
With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq.”
Mr Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, was then wrestled to the ground by security personnel and hauled away.
Today, Bush is scheduled to be in Afghanistan to see how wonderfully things are going there. Wonder what will be waiting for him when he gets there.
UPDATE: Thousands of Iraqis are in the streets of Baghdad today, demanding Mr. Zaidi’s immediate release.
The thing that struck me (so to speak) most about that incident is how calm Maliki was during the whole thing. And how clueless Bush appeared afterward about why an Iraqi citizen might be so angry about the war.
That was the saddest part, to me. “They ain’t happy ’bout being liberated?” We’ve liberated, conservatively, close to a million Iraqis as a direct result of our actions. No, George, they’re not happy.