SHOE THROWING AND OTHER SIGNS OF DISRESPECT

In "Looking Back, Bush and Cheney Reveal Different Views" Sheryl Stolberg, NY Times, December 24, 2008, writes that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been "unusually talkative" lately. Stolberg suggests that they have different goals as they attempt to justify their administration's actions over the last, nearly eight years. Sitting among the wreckage of our nation suffering through the worst financial crisis since 1929, with two on-going disastrous wars, our financial system broken, a strained military, our economy in tatters, one wonders how they have the nerve to try to "justify" what they have done. Stolbert reports that in their uncommonly numerous (as compared to previous administrations) recent interviews the two have given, Bush and Cheney have in some respects parted ways. Bush has finally expressed some misgivings (recall that in 2004 he couldn't think of one mistake). Now he admits he was "unprepared for war" and "regrets" what he calls "the intelligence failure in Iraq." Mr Bush never minded the actual facts. He is not bothered that he was planning a war in Iraq long before 9-11 and that he ignored real intelligence prior to the 9-11 attack, or that tossing aside valid intelligence he cherry picked through Dick Cheney's intelligence efforts to drag a reluctant nation into an unnecessary,costly and disastrous war.

On the other hand, Mr Dick Cheney remains staunchly unrepentant and "defiant to the end". Cheney continues to defend his actions, including torture, and actually stated he"feels good about what he did."

Fortunately for us, these two men are about to leave the protective cocoon of the White House. They will soon learn what the real world thinks and feels about their tenure. What they are about to discover is that outside of their enclosed world where they face only puff ball questions, butt kissing, and polite, tentative prodding, offered up at the hands of the timid media and White House Press corps, what most people here in the US and around the world think of their actions is closer to that expressed by the courageous young Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al Zaidi.

It was al Zaidi who threw his shoes at President Bush in disgust while attending a joint Bush-al Maliki news conference in Baghdad. At the point that President Bush intoned that "While the war in Iraq was not over yet, it is deciseively on its way to being won." Muntadar al Zaidi, a young journalist working for the Cairo based Baghdadia TV hurled his shoe at Bush, as he shouted: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!" The shoe, tumbling heel over toe, sped across the room and would have struck Bush squarely in the head had not the President ducked so quickly behind the high podium. It was a well aimed shot. Al Zaidi, was not finished. As Bush peeked up to see if the coast was clear, Muntadar reached down and pulled off his second shoe, and as he threw it over the heads of the rushed of other journalists and Maliki's security guards, he yelled," "This is for the widows and orphans and all those you killed in Iraq." At Bush's side Mr Al Maliki put up his hand as if to ward off the blow. Bush ducked again below the podium as the struggling and defiant young journalist was dragged from the room. Afterward Bush made light of the disturbance in his folksy way, but the event rightly marred his last visit to Iraq...a country which his actions left as a devastated wreck of a nation.

Perhaps, if American journalists had responded to Bush in some similar manner to express their disgust when he first proposed going into Iraq, or as he spoke up about deregulating the financial markets, or as he encouraged every Tom, Dick and Harry and Jane to get a house mortgage, regardless of their finances, we would not be faced with our present national crisis.

Yes Bush and Cheney are talking it up more, they have a lot of papering over to do with the press. But perhaps instead of sitting and glumly listening, as these men attempt to rewrite the past, our journalists should make some appropriate sign of disagreement when these two again get up to speak(in our culture, shoe throwing is a no no) . But mooning them seems to come to my mind as an appropriate response.