These are my views on the shoe incident. It appeared in the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka on December 18, 2008. Ameen Izzadeen Just get into Iraqi shoes http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID= 35429 The official US interpretation of the historic shoe incident on Sunday was that the journalist Munthazer al-Zaidi would have been a dead man, if he had thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi tyrant. Many would not disagree. The Iraqis, however, did not publicly insult Saddam. Some may point to the incident where Iraqis hit the statue of Saddam at Baghdad's Firdouse Square with their shoes. But this incident was highly stage-managed, not spontaneous. The crowd that participated in this incident was brought there by America's Iraqi stooges such as Ahmed Chalabi. The Iraqis did not throw their shoes at Saddam when the dictator was ruling them with an iron fist and jackboots - either because they feared for their lives or because they did not feel like doing so. After all, Saddam was an Iraqi and there was "Iraqiness" in his tyranny. It was tyranny, no doubt, but there was no humiliation in it for the Iraqi people. The matrix changed with the US invasion of Iraq. Dictator Saddam was replaced by another dictator -- US President George W. Bush -- who showed little respect for international law or opinion. The dictator title suits Bush because democracy does not promote invasion or tolerate occupation, unless there is a humanitarian crisis in a country. The Iraqis see Bush's tyranny, which has led to the deaths of more than 1.2 million Iraqis since the 2003 invasion, as an affront to their dignity. To Arabs, or for that matter to any people who zealously guards their self-respect, occupation of the motherland by a foreign power is the ultimate insult. The Iraqis have been living in shame, and suffering the psychological trauma of being humiliated by the US since 2003. To understand the present Iraqi psyche, the Americans must put themselves in Iraqi shoes. How would an American feel if Iraq had invaded the United States? Imagine Iraqi troops setting up huge bases in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and a massive green zone in Washington. How would the Americans feel, if Iraqi troops manning a checkpoint at Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, had stopped a limousine and ordered its occupants to get out of it to be body-checked at gunpoint? Imagine an American mother going to the office of an Iraqi official and pleading for the release of her son. Imagine an Iraqi soldier molesting an American teenager at a checkpoint. Imagine Iraqi troops arresting some Americans in Texas, putting them in dungeons and forcing them to make sexually explicit nude human pyramids - like some American soldiers did to Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib? Won't the Americans then think that occupation is abhorrent, and an affront to their dignity and a humiliation? The problem with a majority of the Americans was that they were incapable of understanding that occupation was the ultimate insult to a people who, like the Iraqis, hold self dignity and national pride at high esteem. At least, it appeared to be the case when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. How gullible a majority of the Americans are. They believed the wholesale the lies of the Bush administration. One of the thousands of lies, with which Bush and his hawks misled the Americans, was that the Iraqis would welcome the US troops with rice and rose water. It did not happen. Instead, some five years and nine months after the invasion, the commander-in-chief of the US armed forces was shamed with a shoe attack, which is an extreme form of insult in the Arab and Asian culture. The Americans must at least now sit back and take stock of their folly. They supported the US invasion of Iraq. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in 2003, three in four Americans supported the war or felt the Bush administration was right in invading Iraq. These Americans believed the load of crap the Bush administration poured out in justification of its invading an independent sovereign state that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. If an American comes to know that his father is a burglar, what should he or she do? He or she could either support him and join him in his burglaries or do nothing or tell the police. A majority of the Americans joined in the plunder while others, except for a handful, remained silent. If they had wished, they could have stopped Bush and his invading Army, by holding massive people-power demonstrations. It is true there were anti-war demonstrations in the US but they lacked the force to compel the Bush administration to roll back its Iraq plans. Therefore, a majority of the Americans are morally culpable for the death and destruction the Bush administration has caused in Iraq. It is time for penance. The act of penance should not come in the form of suffering. They must do good acts. The Americans should exhort the next administration headed by Barack Obama to make peace, not war; to uphold human rights, to give up torture and to promote democracy for democracy's sake, not for the sake of robbing the oil and resources of other countries. The Americans are changing, it seems, if one interprets the election of Obama, who opposed the Iraq war: But Bush has not. Immediately after the shoe attack, he had the temerity to make a joke of it and comment, "I don't know what the guy's cause is." Bush's comment itself warrants serious study. He was either displaying in public his ignorance of Iraqi affairs or not telling the truth again. Someone should have translated to him al-Zaidi's words which he uttered each time he threw his shoe at him. "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq," were the angry words of al-Zaidi. His action must have reminded the Iraqis, the Arabs and the Muslims the world over of the stoning of Satan on the Muzdalifa Plain in Makkah, a week earlier, during the Haj pilgrimage. Al-Zaidi's cause was as clear to the Iraqis as the orange glow of the fireballs that lit up the Baghdad skies upon the impact of 1000-kilo US bunker busters on Iraqi civilian areas in 2003. It was as clear as the pictures that showed the shame of Abu Ghraib. Bush and Americans should also spare some time to reflect why hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims were jubilant over the shoe incident. One Saudi businessman offered US$ 10 million for al-Zaidi's made-in-Iraq pair of shoes that made history on Sunday. One wonders why American journalists did not have the courage to throw at least their notebooks and pens at Bush when he uttered those lies to justify the Iraq war. It is sad to see the US Fourth Estate degenerating to a level where journalists have virtually ceased to ask follow-up questions or cross examine the President at White House news conferences. At least in Iraq, we have a hero.
