If you're going to throw something, better a shoe than a grenade or a bomb.
I'm not defending Muntather Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who flung both his shoes at President Bush during a Baghdad news conference. However tempting the target, journalists are supposed to fling barbed words at those they dislike, not heavy objects.
Still, not to worry. The whole episode sent nary a shiver through Bush's sunny little universe. Bush merely expressed his mystification about why Zaidi might have hurled those shoes. "I don't know what the guy's cause is," he told reporters brightly after Zaidi was beaten and dragged away by Iraqi guards.
Maybe no one had bothered to translate Zaidi's Arabic words for the president. As Zaidi threw the first shoe, he cried, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" As he flung the second, he was even more explicit: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!"
Iraqi or not, most people other than our outgoing president can probably understand Zaidi's motives, even if we don't really hold with shoe throwing.
The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq triggered a spiral of conflict that has so far left somewhere between 89,892 and 1.3 million Iraqi civilians dead (the numbers are contested) out of a population of just 25 million. It doesn't take much imagination to see that an Iraqi might hold a bit of a grudge.
It's also easy enough to understand why Zaidi became an instant hero around much of the globe.
Across the Arab and Muslim world, gleeful crowds have waved shoes in the air along with signs calling for Zaidi's speedy release and a speedy change in American policies. To much of the world -- less rich and less powerful than the United States -- the United States in the Bush era looks like a greedy, bullying nation. No surprise if plenty of people would be delighted to emulate Zaidi and throw their own shoes at Bush.
Or something more lethal, like a grenade or a bomb.
There's a lot of anger out there. Some is directed at Bush, some at the United States, and some is more free-floating, directed at all those who are imagined to have power or to be allied with or important to those with power.
Compare Zaidi with Ajmal Amir, the 21-year-old Pakistani who took part in the November terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital. In some ways, his story is similar to Zaidi's, full of early lessons in injustice and hopelessness. But his anger was more lethally expressed.
