From the start, the war in Iraq seemed like a gruesome satire of that bitter satire, Wag the Dog: a war invented out of fabrications. When my wife saw a front-page pic this morning of Iraqis holding up a shoe in support of the journalist who hurled his footwear at George W. Bush, she immediately reminded me of “Good Old Shoe,” the song invented in the movie to keep up the patriotic diversion from the president’s tzatzkele tzures.
OK, I will acknowledge that the journalist involved is an ex-Baathist, and that journalists are supposed to use words, not shoes. So we are not to make a hero of him. But did he know that his act of performance art was a parody of a parody?
Hard for me to understand all this. As an “ex-Baathist”, I can sort of figure out why he would hate Bush, but he is now a “Sadrist”, and it was Saddam Hussein who murdered Sadr father and it was Bush that gave the Sadrists political power and in fact put the Shi’ites in control of Iraq. What does this guy want anyway.
The thing that must be remembered by everyone, including those who hate Bush for going into Iraq, is that 99.99% of the Iraqis killed in the violence that came in the wake of the American invasion were killed by their brother Arabs/Muslims. NOT BY AMERICANS. They whine that America is occupying them. Well, Japan and Germany were under a more rigorous American occupation regime than Iraq ever faced and the people of those countries today admit that that was the best thing that ever happened to them and they built peaceful, prosperous nations as a result of this “American occupation”. The fact that someone who carries out such a barbaric, infantile act (regardless of what thinks of Bush it must be defined as such-even Arabs admit that it is a violation of the code of how an Arab is to treat a guest) is hailed by what seems to be the whole Arab world, simply shows how they remain wrapped up in their eternal syndrome of rage and self-pity, always blaming everyone else for their problems except themselves and their inability to live up to the civilized standards of the rest of the world.