A picture that’s worth a thousand words

Yesterday during a press conference with Bush in Baghdad a journalist threw his shoes at Bush’s head. According to eyewitnesses, he stood up about 12 feet from Bush and shouted in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then threw a shoe at Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it. And then he threw his other shoe, shouting in Arabic, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” Bush reportedly tried to brush off the incident telling people that that is true democracy when anyone can draw attention to themselves but he was obviously shaken. Here’s the video of what happened:

In Arab culture throwing a shoe at someone is the ultimate insult. If a person just shows the bottom of his shoes when crossing their legs, you can be sure that they have little respect for the person in front of them. So to have the shoe taken off and thrown at someone’s head is definitely big.  

I’m not gong to parade my ignorance of the situation in Iraq. I don’t know much about the details but I do know that there is a lot of sectarian violence and fighting between the Sunnis and the Shia. And Bush did the world a tremendous favor by getting rid of Saddam. There’s an Arabic saying that only what’s truly right is right to do. So he can’t go liberate a country from its dictator, especially based on false allegations and for personal gain, in the name of righteousness while there’s a much bigger injustice that he’s sponsoring in the very same neighborhood. How can he give that whole cowboy hero act in the Middle East and then with a straight face talk about supporting Israel in it’s occupation of Palestine? The whole Middle East would much rather see Israel gone than Saddam and that would eliminate Muslim terrorism like nothing else. Israel’s occupancy of Palestine is the fountain source that all Muslim terrorists use to recruit. To Arabs he just looks like a two-faced hypocrite and I’m glad he’s leaving office.