By Ted Braun / Chronicle contributor
December 24, 2008 09:35 am
— During the past eight years, President Bush has often given the impression that he lives in a comfortable bubble. He has appeared upbeat about the war, our nation's economy, various natural disasters, and how we have supposedly been coping successfully with all of these challenges. When he has spoken to audiences in this country and abroad, his staff has tried to keep those likely to ask hostile or embarrassing questions from participating in such occasions. And when he travels, his staff makes sure that he doesn't get to see or hear protestors on the street.
Occasionally, this bubble gets punctured. Such an event took place earlier this month as Bush embarked on a legacy-burnishing speaking tour that took him to West Point, Baghdad and other places. When he talked in Baghdad about the great progress that the U.S. had been making in Iraq, Muntathar al-Zaidi, an Iraqi TV journalist, threw one of his shoes at Bush, shouting, "This is a farewell kiss, you dog." Then he threw a second shoe, shouting "This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq."
Al-Zaidi was quickly overpowered, beaten, and incarcerated. He could well be given a 5-to-15-year prison sentence or even a death sentence for "aggression against a foreign head of state during an official visit." Bush, who was able to duck both shoes, viewed it merely as a publicity stunt. Nevertheless, this dramatic act offered another lesson for us to learn: it revealed deep-seated resentments and anger among the Iraqi people that we do well not to ignore. Large demonstrations of support for al-Zaidi erupted in cities all across Iraq, and 100 Arab lawyers have offered to defend him.
What was al-Zaidi's complaint against our nation? It stems from the deaths of Iraqi civilians since 1991 that resulted from our use of depleted uranium, sanctions banning medicines, and Iraq's inability to combat epidemics such a cholera. Since 2003, he has reported on the suffering of his people as he has watched the U.S. destroying the Iraqi infrastructure -- houses, hospitals, mosques, schools, factories, water treatment plants and historical sites. Nearly a million civilians have now lost their lives, two-and-a-half million have been internally displaced, and two million more have fled the country.
Since 2003, al-Zaidi has also seen photos on how U.S. guards and interrogators had humiliated, assaulted, and tortured Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other prisons. Most of these have not been accused of any crime but were captured by bounty-hunters for profit.
It was hoped that these prisoners could be forced through torture to give some information about "terrorists." Thus prisoners have been waterboarded, threatened by dogs and forced to go naked and to be led around on leashes like dogs. A new technique of torture for prisoners kept in isolation cells has been to force them to listen to loud heavy metal music 24 hours a day, either through ceiling speakers or through headphones that could not be removed. This has effectively destroyed their minds so they can never again be fully useful members of their families or society.
Al-Zaidi no doubt knew that George Bush had a primary responsibility for such developments. On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush signed an executive order exempting captives in the "War on Terror" from protections of the Geneva Conventions.
The bubble-puncturing that took place in Baghdad on Dec. 14 also helped to puncture a bubble in which all of us in the U.S. have been living. We know little about the pain and suffering of the people whose country we continue to occupy, exploit and destroy. Maybe we need to retrieve the shoes that have been thrown as an insult and walk in them for a mile or two. Then we could try to find out what life has been like for their wearers. And then maybe they could become shoes not of anger but of understanding, empathy, and friendship.
This column is sponsored by Cumberland Countians for Peace and Justice, an organization composed of representatives from various churches in the area, and dedicated by the local writers to the theme that the lion and the lamb can and must learn to live together and grow in their relationship toward one another to ensure a better world. Opinions expressed in �Lion and the Lamb� columns are not necessarily those of the Crossville Chronicle publisher, editor or staff. For more information, contact Emerson Abts, editor, at 277-5101.
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