The Shoe Thrower

George W. Bush will remain the International Man of Mystery (how did he get where he is and why?) until the very end of his term, I suppose..  I thought his immediate reaction to having shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist was trademark bizarre: he described the size (10) and then characterized the assault as indicative of the growth of democracy in Iraq.  It's probably true that a journalist would not have thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein, so I guess that's something.  Throwing shoes at someone, however, and not just in Arab cultures where it has a special significance, is not, strictly speaking, simply the exercise of some First Amendment right.  The guy was trying to hit Bush with his shoes, not just make a point.

Such events confirm for me that we probably don't have much of a handle on what's really gone down in Iraq.  The overall narrative, the one the Bush Administration sells at every opportunity (Bush was selling it just before he started playing Duck-the-Flying-Brogues), is that Iraq was liberated from a terrible tyrant, one who posed a threat to the peace and stability of the world.  It was confirmed within a few months of the invasion of March, 2003, that Saddam did not pose a serious threat to anyone; all such ideas were at that point at least twelve years out of date.  So we were left with the usual humanitarian fall-back position: America as the great liberator, the Big Brother who comes to the aid of oppressed peasantries, as we say we did in Vietnam.

So who was the shoe thrower?  Muntadahr al-Zeidi, a 28 year old journalist, Shiite, unmarried, who was detained once each by Iraqis and by the Americans.  So it was personal as well as political.  He keeps a poster of Che Guevara on the wall of his Baghdad apartment.  Throughout the Arab world, al-Zeidi is achieving what you might call minor cult status: the man who stood up to the Americans.  Nevertheless, the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki is going to have to do something with their fellow Shiite.  

One way or another, all of this seems pretty strange, based on the Official Narrative.  We did get rid of Saddam Hussein, didn't we?A lot of soldiers died and we borrowed and spent billions we couldn't afford in the effort.  And this guy is throwing shoes at the President? This journalist is part of the majority oppressed by Saddam's Sunni minority (as was Nouri).  

Something huge is missing from the picture.  My thoughts return, as they often do, to the reluctance (actually: refusal) of the U.S. government to do an honest accounting of two vital statistics: how many Iraqis have actually died as the result of violence in Iraq since March, 2003?  And how many Iraqis have actually been displaced from their homes by ethnic violence during the same period?  I strongly suspect the real reason for al-Zeidi's cult status lies in the answers to these questions.  Iraq became such a dangerous, treacherous place after the invasion of 2003 that America really has no unbiased eyes and ears dispersed throughout Iraq who can tell us what life is really like there now, and what has happened over the last six years.  We're at the mercy of American media which are constrained by the dangers of on-the-scene reporting, and which aren't that motivated to challenge the Official Narrative in the first place.

But the Iraqis, those we set free, throwing shoes, the ultimate symbol of derision in the Arab world, at their Liberator-in-Chief. Something just doesn't add up.