Damned if I know why it was an Iraqi who tossed his shoe at the lesser Bush last week, but it didn't come as a total surprise.
For months I'd been expecting the mother or father of a dead infantryman to throw paint on the presidential car or for a newly unemployed father of twins to rage at the President publicly over the inability to provide for one's children in a depression created by bad leadership, indifference and greed.
Instead, we waited until an Iraqi reporter in a moment of inspired, spontaneous fury showed us that Iraq, like America, is full of ordinary people who don't grab Kalashnikovs or suicide vests packed with C4 even in their deepest moments of anger. Not when their hearts are broken. Not when a glib, slippery idiot arrives from an invading power to tell them that all the violence, the mountainous dead, the years of misery have now -- hey, presto! -- been made worthwhile.
'You're free, safe and secure," Bush said, in that un-smooth lying voice North Americans are unfortunately used to. It's his fourth visit. No one had briefed him that Iraq might perceive his message as arrogance. No one had told him that the Arabs in the room still had their shoes.
And then suddenly, an Iraqi man decided to say "bullshit" in Arabic.
From my time in Saudi Arabia, I know that the point of throwing or even showing the underside of a shoe to an enemy is a not-so-subtle Arabism: shoes are attached to the lowest part of a man, they trail in the dirt. It means "you get to see the underside of my shoe... you're something I'd walk on -- or worse -- something I'd walk through."
Bush thinks he escaped the insult by not being hit. He's wrong. In Sadr City and Najaf later that day, ordinary Iraqis protested by showing and throwing shoes. Iraqis now have a non-violent way of expressing their dissatisfaction and anger. There will be a lot more shoe leather in the air in the months before we withdraw. Perhaps someone in Illinois will even consider throwing a shoe or two at Governor Blagojevich.
It couldn't hurt.
Meanwhile, Muntadar al-Zeidi, "he of the poor aim," is an overnight hero in his own country. Iraqi's are calling for his release, but he's probably now wearing an orange suit in Guantanamo Bay. Too bad. I'd like to see him interviewed on CNN, wouldn't you?
George Bush claims he doesn't even know "what al-Zeidi beef is." Surely, the man should be given the opportunity to tell us all here in America.
Maybe he could even throw in the first baseball of 2009...
you have to get out more it is not something that is an insult in the Arab world, it is considered an insult in all of Asia
when Nizon went ot China in the 70's he made a stop in Thailand and nearly set off an international incident by crossing his leg over one knee an allowing the sole of his shoe to point directly at the King of Siam (Thailand)
And incidentally, I'd love to get out more. Unfortunately, I have young kids.
It usually takes HuffPo several days to post my blogs so I wrote 'last week' in the first sentence describing yesterday's events in Sadr City.
Also, the second last para should read 'what al-Zeidi's beef is'.
Both of these are entirely my own errors. (I make a lot of them and for this reason I work best with detail oriented editors. My apologies).
I've just noticed a fine piece called 'Shoe Hurling Iraqi Becomes a Folk Hero' in today's (Dec 15th's) NYTimes that specifies the kind of prison sentence awaiting Mr. al-Zaidi.
Seven years in an Iraqi prison seems a bit harsh, after all he didn't even connect.