It’s both exhilarating and humiliating to see a photo of George W. Bush cowering as a shoe flies towards his head. For those of you who haven’t experienced it, you must have missed yesterday’s story about Bush’s final visit to Iraq. I managed to read about the incident on The New York Times’ website, and I was reminded of a quote from the 2005 film The Weather Man. The character Robert Spritzel (played by Michael Caine) says that in “this shit life…we must chuck some things.” It’s too fitting a caption for such an image.
Seeing the picture is exhilarating because, stated simply, I support the shoe-tossing Iraqi journalist. I’d like to chuck a rubber object at Bush’s head too. So you can imagine then why I find this AP story headline a bit humorous: “Bush’s Iraq-Afghan farewell tour marred by dissent.” The headline makes him sound like a rock ‘n roll star playing concerts around the world, only to receive some unexpected (and undeserved) criticism. It occurred to me that we haven’t heard many stories about Bush receiving dissent first-hand. I think that says something about the extent to which “Dubyah” has been hiding from the public lately. The Administration doesn’t give the public a chance to air their grievances, especially not if it could create such a racy photo opportunity.
The AP headline also implies that Bush deserved a warm welcome in Iraq, which I find ridiculous. The idea that the American government might be supported or praised in Iraq in late 2008 seems absurd to me because I’ve seen the 2007 documentary No End In Sight, directed by Charles Ferguson. The film is a prime example of why I’ve been turning to documentaries for in-depth information with perspective and credibility — the kind that mainstream media just cannot provide. The documentary is rich in its sources; those include veteran soldiers, military officers, American government officials, journalists, etc.
The source that sticks out most clearly in my memory is Ambassador Barbara Bodine, whom the film introduces as the person “in charge of Baghdad for the U.S. occupation.” Naturally, she speaks from a very unique position, and she effectively illustrates exactly what has gone wrong there over the past seven years. The most important point is that she was not given the appropriate resources or power to act. She felt more like a puppet, while Dick Cheney and his cohorts controlled the situation from Washington.
What’s worse, the film’s sources collectively suggest that Cheney and friends purposefully made the situation worse in Iraq so they would have an excuse to continue the occupation indefinitely. In other words, the Administration wanted a fortress in the Middle East, and this was the easiest way to obtain one. I’d be more skeptical of the film if more of the sources were from outside the American government. But across governmental branches and departments, everyone gives the sense that the White House ran the show consistently, and also that they ran it terribly. At the same time, every source that criticized of the Bush Administration also seemed to feel helpless towards the situation. Bodine’s story is particularly painful. To know that an American Ambassador could have maintained order after the removal of Saddam Hussein, but who was prevented by the likes of Cheney—that’s such a source of anger and remorse.
Now you might see why I also found the shoe photo humiliating. We’re still an object of worldwide hatred. We’re viewed as the world’s dopey bully who steals lunch money and gives wedgies. The Bush Administration will bear most of the humiliation as Obama transitions into office, but common citizens around the world won’t be too rapid to change their opinions of us. The fact that the Iraqi journalist threw a shoe and not a rock or a grenade (if we assume he could have gotten such an object into the press conference) also deserves attention. In a way, the shoe was more powerful than an actual weapon. The journalist essentially said that Bush was worth less than the dust below his shoes. And that’s an especially strong sentiment, if I remember that aspect of Iraqi culture correctly.
While most of us will never get a chance to inflict our own humiliation on George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others who have furthered the deterioration of America’s reputation, we can take this chance to educate ourselves on exactly what happened from 2000 to 2008. Watching No End In Sight is a good start. We should all be reflecting on what went wrong, at home and abroad, and thinking of how to prevent such atrocities from ever occurring again—not only in a broad political sense, but also on an individual basis. To reverse the wrongs that have occurred, it’s going to take a collaborative effort involving all concerned Americans. We’ve all been chucking things for a while. Hopefully in the future we won’t have to quite as often.
No End In Sight Official Trailer:
