A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.
An Iraqi journalist was wrestled to the floor by security guards after he called Mr Bush "a dog" and threw his footwear, just missing the president.
Showing the soles of shoes to someone is a sign of contempt in Arab culture.
During the trip, Mr Bush and Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki signed the new security agreement between their countries.
The pact calls for US troops to leave Iraq in 2011 - eight years after the 2003 invasion that has in part defined the Bush presidency.
I apologize for mixing sources. The article and link are from the BBC. I do not know how to cut video from the site though, so I have posted video of the event from MSNBC.
I wonder what got that Iraqi journalist so mad. Oh wait, I bet I know. It's probably that Bush is responsible for the utter destruction of the poor guys country. Yeah, that's probably it.
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By way of an update. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7785338.stm
2 comments:
True enough.
But, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, I feel it's important to point out that 8 years ago, this very same action would have resulted in this man (and quite likely his family) being imprisoned, tortured, and killed. And we're not talking stress positions or water boarding here. We're talking about being set on fire, being dipped in acid, having tongues removed with pliers, etc.
Living under oppressive tyranny may have been immediately preferable to the last five years of insurgent shit storm, if for the security alone. And yes, a lot of people have suffered and/or died that shouldn't have, and we cannot excuse the Bush administration for that.
But ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, is it not likely that Iraqis will largely be far better off than they would be had the war not taken place at all?
*shrug* Maybe. I hope so. I hope that the next generation of Iraqi's will know peace and prosperity in a way they would have otherwise never known under the thumb of Saddam and his sons. Maybe then (and I'm guessing only then), will this whole affair have seemed somewhat worth while; from the perspective of history books.
But for now, the fact that this man can throw his shoe at a president without fearing for his life or his family is at least a hopeful sign.
I agree with you...sort of. Yes, it is some mark of achievement that this man can throw shoes at the US president, and I am glad he did. But still, it is really difficult to argue counter factuals. What we know is that under Hussein this would have likely resulted in the man's torture and death. Under the new regime it likely results in his detention. And this sort of thing happened to lots and lots of people. In fact, Iraq was consistently one of the world's worst human rights abusers.
What we know about the US invasion is that while this man can now throw shoes at the leadership, some half a million Iraqis have been killed and millions injured, displaced, or otherwise had their lives shattered. So is it a fair trade off? Well, it's hard to say because we have no idea what would have happened if the US had never intervened. Saddam could have slipped on a bar of soap and broken his neck and peace could have reigned through the land. He could have initiated a genocide that killed more people than the US invasion. The point is we don't know; so it is a real hard sell to claim that while all this awfulness occurred it is better that what would have happened if Hussein had stayed in power. All we know is what actually occurred, and what occurred was pretty fucking bad.
But yeah. I hope it's worth it. I hope that democracy and prosperity flourish in Iraq, and that in the end the US can at least say it did help establish stability. But I don't know. And even if that does happen, I don't know that we could ever say it was worth it. Hussein would not have ruled forever. So how many people would have been brutalized during his rein? If he lived to 65? to 90? Would be more or less than the dozens of thousands that suffered as a result of US intervention? Who knows? We just can't ever say that the end justified the means.
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