George W. Bush Has Been Throwing Shoes at Us

Most commentators took the shoe-throwing incident that happened over
the weekend as a bit of grotesque political slapstick. The Iraqi
television reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush apparently
considered himself a martyr, according to a note he passed to a
colleague on the spot. No doubt he anticipated some extremely cruel
reprisal for his symbolic protest. It's up in the air what will happen
to Muntadar al-Zeidi. The fact that he became an instant hero in the
Arab street carries small significance in the West, since that tinder
box doesn't need even a spark to ignite it.

We continually fail, it seems, to view our Middle Eastern disaster
through global eyes. A momentary insult hurled at America -- or at Mr.
Bush personally, if that was the primary intent -- is a minuscule
rebuke for the countless insults the rest of the world has had to bear.
The unilateral invasion of Iraq was an insult to our allies, who had
been naive enough to trust in six decades of cooperation through NATO
and the UN. The distortion and outright lying about Saddam's imminent
threat to the United States was an insult to everyone's intelligence.
The placing of responsibility for 9/11 on Saddam's shoulders was an
insult to the truth.

As he makes the rounds of exit interviews, Mr. Bush continues to throw
shoes at us. His "So what?" attitude toward the disaster he created is
the first shoe, the second is his blind assertion that the war in Iraq
is close to victory. Informed Middle East experts, the very sort he
ignored at the outset of his military adventures, point to a fragile
peace that could be shattered at any moment. The Sunni population of
Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed. Sadr City remains a powder keg.
Half of the country's two million Christians have been wiped out or
forced into exile. Civilian casualties since the invasion, counting the
losses in sectarian attacks, amount to 150,000 at the very least and
could be over 600,000 -- no one knows.

For Mr. Bush to ignore these brutal facts and try to paper them over
with slogans about democracy and victory must have something to do with
the shoes hurled at him. It's heartbreaking to think of the pent-up
rage and sorrow that lie behind the act. Those feelings are far from
being quelled. Should Iraq turn into a Shiite theocracy with
anti-American leanings, a fate that seems to be in the offing, Mr. Bush
will have another thing to say "So what?" about, but at least he'll be
doing it in private.