So when I first saw the footage of those flying shoes coming at President Bush I laughed a lot. Actually that happened the second and third and fourth time I watched him ducking. It brings up everytime I've hurled or wanted to hurl something at the TV screen when the President (Bush, Baby Bush, or Reagan) speaks. My first thought was -- good for you, oh angry and determined thrower of shoes on behalf of millions of fellow angry people who would like to do the same thing. Imagine a million or so shoes coming at Bush. What an image! Later on I read that folks are having shoe-ins, so I'm not the only person with this rather wacky image of social protest out there.
But really, when the shoes landed, and the poor journalist is carted off to jail (and we know that time in an Iraqi jail does not mean your Geneva convention rights are going to be respected, the USA made sure of that, yes indeed.)...the sad reality is that the U.S. has unleashed terrible destruction and death amongst the Iraqi people for no justifiable reason (no WMD, no Osama, nada). Innocents die, and a country lies in ruins (the press reports that Iraq lacks basic infrastructure like electricity and running water for its population).
My laughter dies down quick when I think of what that angry journalist has seen in reporting on the war in his own land. I've seen just snippets in the NYT coverage and recoiled at the images of wounded children, desolate parents. I cannot imagine seeing such suffering up close, talking to those parents, seeing the wounded and dead.
Really my thought is -- may God forgive us, from Bush right down to each taxpayer. You and me.
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