THE ROVING EYE The emperor gets the boot
By Pepe Escobar
In the end, President George W Bush ended up finding his weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. Munthather al-Zaidi, the 28-year-old Baghdad correspondent
for the independent, anti-occupation, anti-sectarian, Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya
satellite channel who sent Bush a "goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people" in the
form of a flying pair of size 10s and instantly achieved folk hero status all
over the Arab nation and across "the Internets" (copyright Bush), with a
simple, graphically impeccable gesture brought to a close not only Bush's
ultra-secretive last stop in Iraq (a press conference with sometime US puppet
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki) but managed to sum up the whole Iraqi
tragedy. No wonder he has been dubbed “the new Saladin” across the Arab world.
From now on three historic images will forever sum up the Bush
administration-generated Iraqi tragedy: Bush's “Mission Accomplished” stunt off
San Diego harbor; the “black scarecrow” figure tortured at Abu Ghraib; and
Iraq's leather-soled kiss to the man who destroyed the country. The toppling of
Saddam's statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square in April 9, 2003, was nothing but a
staged event for US networks.
Al-Zaidi called Bush, in Arabic, at the top of his lungs, ya kalb ("you
dog") - now a legendary Youtube epithet that around the world has been largely
interpreted as unfair to dogs, who for all their barking do not gang up and
launch pre-emptive wars that cause more than 1 million deaths and displace more
than 4 million people.
Before being taken down by US and Iraqi secret service ops, al-Zaidi still had
time to yell, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed
in Iraq,” - a factual, journalistic response to the lies he had just endured
from Bush, who in his prepared remarks pontificated on the "success" of the
recent parliament-approved Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), a "success" Bush
attributes to the troop "surge".
For the record: SOFA, negotiated after an extremely turbulent eight months,
rules that the US military must totally withdraw from Iraq by December 2011 (a
real timeline, always fought by the Bush camp); there will be no military bases
left behind; and the US military cannot use Iraq to attack Iran or anyone else.
For all practical purposes - and of course barring inexorable Pentagon pressure
over president-elect Barack Obama - the neo-colonial Bush war/occupation will
be over by the end of 2011. Bush's White House was so exultant with this
"success" that it did not even publish a copy of SOFA in English.
The overwhelming majority of Sunni and Shi'ite Iraqis (but not the Kurds) want
the end of the occupation - just like al-Zaidi. Before hurling his
leather-soled missiles, al-Zaidi certainly had Bush's true legacy in Iraq in
mind, which includes hundreds of thousands of dead and "disappeared", over 4
million internally and externally displaced, 70% unemployment, a lack of
electricity, a lack of drinking water, a cholera epidemic, the balkanization of
Baghdad - a shabby, dangerous collection of Sunni and Shi'ite ghettos separated
by high blast walls - and the horrendously incompetent kleptocracy that calls
itself the Iraqi parliament.
Everyone is guilty
These shoes also metaphorically hit the huge Bush administration army of
advisers, analysts, sycophants, politicians, diplomats, generals, UN
bureaucrats, businessmen, "human-rights" wags, media hacks and assorted
profiteers that made the Iraqi tragedy possible. These shoes put to immense
shame US public opinion, which overwhelmingly condoned the 2003 invasion and
occupation and only turned against it when facts on the ground and horrific
non-stop carnage spelled out that this was an "unwinnable" war.
For its part, US corporate media, with predictable inanity - or rather as still
more evidence of its spinelessness in confronting the Bush administration -
chose to endlessly dwell on Bush's cat-like reflexes ("I saw his sole") when he
dodged al-Zaidi's flying size 10s.
Predictably adding (real) injury to the insult, and therefore amplifying its
already formidable impact, Iraqi TV al-Sharqiya reported that al-Zaidi is for
all practical purposes being tortured at Camp Cropper - the sinister,
sprawling, US-controlled Baghdad airport prison; and his older brother,
Dargham, told the BBC he has a broken hand, broken ribs, an eye injury and
suffers from internal bleeding. Al-Sharquiya also points to signs of torture on
his thighs and an immobile right arm. Al-Sharqiya has had firsthand experience
on the matter - they just lost four reporters who uncovered and reported
widespread torture in Green Zone prisons.
Before al-Zaidi's act became a global Internet sensation this past Monday, on
Sunday al-Jazeera's news anchor Layla Al-Sheikhly, an Iraqi, was the only one
to report it properly; other Arab networks - mindful of hurting American
feelings - blacked out the crucial "you dog" bit. Asad AbuKhalil, professor of
politics at California State University, Stanislaus and editor of the Angry
Arab blog, quipped, "The fellow would have preferred rotten eggs and tomatoes
if they were as easy to sneak through the tight security checks as ... shoes."
As has been extensively reported in the Arab world, al-Zaidi graduated in
journalism from Baghdad University, was an active member of the Iraqi Student
Union before the invasion and has always been anti-occupation. After he
graduated, he worked at al-Qasim al-Mushterek newspaper, an Iraqi daily founded
after the invasion, then at the al-Diyar satellite channel, and finally joined
the al-Baghdadiya satellite channel. The fact that he may be technically a
"leftist" is irrelevant; his act has been hailed all over Iraq and the Arab
nation (after all, Iraq is considered by Arabs as the eastern flank of the Arab
nation) by Sunnis and Shi'ites, seculars and Islamists alike. He had already
been kidnapped and tortured - by a Shi'ite militia - before.
Mobilization for al-Zaidi's release before he is waterboarded to death is
essential. Al-Jazeera's Arabic channel reported that up to 100 Arab lawyers
have volunteered to defend him. Street protests against his detention have been
held in Baghdad, Mosul, Sunni Fallujah and Shi'ite Nassiriya. Technically, he
is being "investigated" by the military command in charge of Baghdad security,
headed by the sinister Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser. He
may face charges of insulting a foreign leader as well as Maliki, who was
side-by-side with Bush - and get a maximum penalty of two years in jail.
I did it my way
Contrast the shoes targeting Bush with Bush's last throes - his mandated
"Operation Legacy" conducted by Texan Macchiavelli Karl Rove (consisting of a
two-page list of talking points now endlessly spun by outgoing Bush
administration officials to gullible corporate media). Instead, a real-life
"Operation Legacy" shortlist should include all the aspects of the Bush
doctrine ("In what respect, Charlie?", as Sara "Barracuda" Palin would say);
the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, with the option of illegal raids into
the Pakistani tribal areas and a pre-emptive attack on Iran; the complete
normalization of torture - and outsourcing of torture - as an "American value";
a monstrous national deficit that spells national bankruptcy; the destruction
of the US economy; and a repressive police state which spies on its citizens -
ripping the constitution and the Bill of Rights to shreds.
Only a few days before al-Zaidi's act, in an interview published in the Chicago
Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, president-elect Barack Obama promised,
"We've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and
also in the Muslim world in particular ... So we need to take advantage of
that."
If Obama really wants to seize the "opportunity" and "reboot" America's image,
he must convince the Muslim world that the US will renounce pre-emptive wars
against Muslim countries; will stop demonizing them; will renounce the silly
and misguided concept of "Islamofascism"; will practice an equitable foreign
policy; and will not tolerate the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
by the state of Israel. He could start with a speech in Baghdad. Not a
Bush-style ultra-secretive appearance at a military base or in the Green Zone,
but a speech in real-life, open-air Baghdad, in Firdous Square for instance.
Till then, this is what the US gets - a flicker of poetic justice still shining
in the post-everything era: a little emperor cowering behind a lectern dodging
a flying shoe.
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