Our president, the wretched villain who threw away our economy and our people’s lives in a wasteful, failed war, skulked into Iraq and tried to pretend he was a hero. Nobody was fooled, and he got a rude surprise.
Bush had just finished his prepared remarks in which he said the security agreement was made possible by the U.S. surge of troops earlier this year, when the journalist, Muthathar al Zaidi pulled his shoes off and hurled them at the president. “This is a goodbye kiss, you dog,” Zaidi shouted.
Bush dodged the shoes and was not struck. Bodyguards quickly wrestled Zaidi to the floor and hauled him, kicking and screaming, from the room. Two other Iraqi journalists were briefly detained after one of them called Zaidi’s actions “courageous.”
Catch that last line: journalists were detained for commenting on this action. I’ll comment, too: I think Zaidi was brave and right. I wish a few American journalists had the guts to throw shoes at the president — they should have started in 2001. Can we make it a new tradition?
So it was Nick Gotts (along with the BBC and the Gaurdian) who made Tony Blair what he was.
Nick, you bastard. So it’s all your fault.
And did peter just intimate Tony Blair was left wing?
From #471
Please PZ, my opinion of you is in a nose dive. I thought you were above this kind of sniveling.
“George W. Bush was beaten to death by a gang of thugs armed with baseball bats? When did this happen? You’d think it would be on all the news shows.”
No he wasn’t PZ and that wasn’t the point and you know it. Lets look at your ACTUAL post and not the “qoute mining” your feebly attempting. The first and last sentences doom your argument.
“America is kind of a land of thugs, isn’t it?” and, wait for it…
“If anyone wants to talk about civilized behavior, this isn’t it.”
Hmmm, then you screw the cephalopod by saying this:
“I think Zaidi was brave and right. I wish a few American journalists had the guts to throw shoes at the president — they should have started in 2001. Can we make it a new tradition?”
Throwing shoes or hitting with a baseball bat its still assault and what did you say about civilized behavior?
If anyone wants to talk about civilized behavior, this isn’t it.
George W. Bush was beaten to death by a gang of thugs armed with baseball bats? When did this happen? You’d think it would be on all the news shows.
Surely he has the support of the Zapatistas.
@497: so throwing shoes = horrifying violence, not to be condoned. But invading and occupying Iraq? Bush gets a pass for that?
Randy | December 15, 2008 11:16 AM
“Please PZ, my opinion of you is in a nose dive.”
For some reason I really don’t think PZ gives a flying shoe about what Randy thinks…
not that Randy really thinks that much to begin with.
I’m sure he’s trying to take it in stride
Thousands of Iraqis are demonstrating for al-Zaidi’s release from
torturepolice custody: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7783608.stm.SC: Please do not clog this thread with foreign-language shoe-puns. That kind of sabotage is not appreciated.
I wonder if at least some of those with multiple houses keep them at rather low occupancy rates. Perhaps these houses also widely distributed in space. People with such a large footprint would understandably be horrified at the idea of throwing shoes.
“Surely he has the support of the Zapatistas.”
And the Arch-bishop of Canterbury.
@497: so throwing shoes = horrifying violence, not to be condoned. But invading and occupying Iraq? Bush gets a pass for that?
Throwing shoe does not equal “horrifying violence”, but that doesn’t mean it’s not wrong and not to be condoned.
When did I say Bush should get a pass for his crimes? People don’t read what I write. Deal with that the right way. This is not the right way and compromising this is to disrespect the principles that have built the civil society most of us here enjoy very much.
Okay. That was just awesome.
I remain impressed with the intense fear of footwear the Fighting Blogger Brigade(TM) seems to exhibit, here…
Accordingly, I’m waiting for the apologists for random warfare against tyrants of convenience to morph the justification of the war yet one more time. I figure the narrative ‘ll go somethin’ like this, now:
a) We are invading because Saddam was involved in the September 11 attacks … (BKSPC BKSPC BKSPC…)
b) Erm. No. Our bad. PR office fumble, y’know. Typos. What we meant to say was: we are invading because Saddam is hiding weapons of mass destruction… (BKSPC BKSPC BKSPC…)
c) Scratch that. That’s ‘to spread freedom’. Yeah. That’s the ticket…
(BKSPC BKSPC BKSPC…)
d) Sorry. Us again. What we meant to say was: the invasion of Iraq was carried out responsibly and in good faith by a genuine international coalition of the willing because we have received reliable intelligence that a large number of Iraqis may, in fact, possess footwear of mass destruction. Currently, Operation Desert Shoehorn is underway and on track. Our plan is to reduce Iraq’s growing and menacing capacity to construct and distribute shoes, boots, and other sundry leather-based threats to the peace of the civilized world by interdicting attempts by militant foreign shoemakers to enter the country–besides generally reducing the entire region to a smoking ball of rubble…
Furthermore, in a show of good faith and international solidarity, we also plan to trash our own economy to the point where it is unlikely any of our own citizenry will be able to afford shoes either.
Think of it as a bilateral deshodding. White house press office out.
Nike just came out with a new self-guided model.
The all-purpose Tracking Shoe.
He should have used wingtips. They have better lift and accuracy.
There are two organisations which throw pies to offending politicians and public figures (see entartage. The first one is based in France, the second one in Quebec (Canada).
Among their most well known victims are Bill Gates (whom didn’t sue his “attackers” by the way), Ségolène Royal (leader of the leftmost party in France; she sued), Jean Chrétien (former prime minister of Canada). Most take it quite humorously.
Is it an act of violence ? I don’t think so, except so far as wounding an ego or image is an act of violence. And your image does not suffer too much if you just smile it off, rather than show yourself to be an officious prick who gets all flushed with self-importance.
How much evil to warrant that ? None as such. If you’re a public figure, and you do things that some people find objectionable, it’s pretty stupid to be surprised that they show their disapproval. Jean Chrétien did nothing as patently evil as start an unjustified war. We even miss him now that we’re stuck with “There-no-economic-crisis” Harper.
Why not civil discourse, do you ask ? Because it simply doesn’t work. We live in an image based society. People have shown, vehemently, their disapproval of the Iraq war on blogs, newspaper, public demonstrations and most importantly, vote. The war’s still on, and many americans (and others) just go on to ignore it, comfortably thinking that Iraq was “liberated”.
Iraqis do not even get that much. A question, or public opinion piece, can be safely ignored, and even if it is not, won’t be noted because in today’s media, based on fast images, it’s boring. A thrown shoe (or pie), however, gets on TVs (and blogs) all around the world, and is much better that the alternative, which would have been an attempt on his life. It’s an unmistakable message from the iraqi people that they don’t feel “liberated” at all.
My point is simple:
If PZ were attending a talk somewhere and the enraged Catholics decidied his “desecration” had gone on long enough decided to throw shoes. What are the chances PZ would be on his blog enraged himself decrying the “uncivilized barbarism” the Catholics displayed in the “unwarrented attack on his person”.
Go farther as someone earlier suggested. The shoes don’t work. They aren’t being listened to. PZ is continuing his dispicible acts. Hmmm, firebomb time. A stretch, probably, but look at the abortion clinic protestors. Every once in awhile one decides a bomb is a good idea “to get heard”. Its called escalation. Condeming one act of violence while glorifing another (yes it was a shoe, go back to sleep mayhempix) is hypocritical. Period. The end.
I swear, the whole “How lovely that he can throw a shoe and not be killed, which he would under Saddam! Thus, Bush is a saint!” talking point is the new “You can attack Christians because we’re nice and fluffy, but you’d NEVER do that to Muslims.”
The conservatives seem to be all over this new, uh, “argument” like a wet suit on an evangelist.
Posted by: Randy | December 15, 2008 11:59 AM
“My point is simple”
-Oh, the irony.
“Go farther as someone earlier suggested. The shoes don’t work. They aren’t being listened to. PZ is continuing his dispicible acts. Hmmm, firebomb time. A stretch, probably, but look at the abortion clinic protestors. Every once in awhile one decides a bomb is a good idea “to get heard”. Its called escalation.”
-Randy has just defined the Domino Shoe Theory…
and we all know how the true all of the past Domino theories turned out to be.
P.Z.,
I agree with your general sentiment.
One point of critique, though:
Call me an idealist, but I still think that the life of an Iraqi person isn’t worth less than the life of a US citizen, so that the tragic, unnecessary deaths of so many US soldiers still pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of deaths of people who did not sign up willingly for combat operations and knew what could happen.
Randy,
are you seriously equating PZ’s cracker desecration with Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, causing several hundred thousand unnecessary deaths, and destroying this country’s infrastructure and economy ?
Strap Imelda Marcos to your chest and voila!
A suicide shoe bomber.
#516
“If PZ were attending a talk somewhere and the enraged Catholics decidied his “desecration” had gone on long enough decided to throw shoes. What are the chances PZ would be on his blog enraged himself decrying the “uncivilized barbarism” the Catholics displayed in the “unwarrented attack on his person”.”
Yeah, that’s a great comparison, Randy. Because as we all know, PZ has also gotten us into a pointless and costly war and boned our economy. Surely he deserves a boot to the head as much as the next war criminal!
Idiot.
I for one am still waiting for the other shoe to drop
Is this where I point up to 497, Frederik Rosenkjær? It doesn’t say anything like what you’ve quoted. I, for one, don’t agree there are common rules held by the whole world as to what “civil society” entails. What is polite one place is the height of rudeness down the block. There is no one common “right way” to live. In fact, many conflicts stem from trying to impose one way – your way – on other peoples.
Bush will likely get a free pass – if you don’t count his approval rating as he leaves office. So, being a person aware that Bush, in charge of a group of people who don’t understand your culture, and have bombed and bungled their way into a civil war – not following any of the rules of conflict recognized by their peers in the international community – and have killed people you knew. This person, Bush, is doing a victory lap in your backyard, while playing the cutesy ignoring-the-reporters’-questions style of press conference he’s so fond of – I don’t think shoe-tossing is so unreasonable.
@511 Fredrik Rosenkjær:
I completely agree with you. Unless done in self-defense or to prevent the harming of others, violence can not be tolerated. To me it’s a matter of principles. If you applaud and accept acts of violence based on the dislike of certain individuals, I feel that you are moving dangerously close to a lynch mob mentality.
Ah, come on. It was a shoe. You think normal people often go easily from, insult, spit, shoe or pie-throwing to outright murder ?
Are you nuts ?
Let’s put that whole scene in a schoolyard. A bully taunts you with insults and finally pushes you on the floor. You go to the teacher, who keeps ignoring it.
You seriously think that throwing poo to the little prick, with the intent to humiliate him into stopping his actions, is an action that will finally lead to you bashing his skull open with a baseball bat ?
Once again, are you nuts ?
I’ll say this without the slightest qualification: Muntadar al-Zeidi is solidly in my “Heroes” column.
I think he showed restraint. A million or so dead Iraqis, 4 million or so refugees, a country torn apart, and all this Iraqi did was INSULT the architect of it all. It wasn’t assault; it was the moral equivalent of me flipping Bush off. That’s all it was.
I think it’s perfectly fine, even an understatement, to insult such leaders. Bush had it coming.
And I call bullshit on this statement: “The ratio of magnitudes of these wrongs doesn’t enter into it.” I think my reasons for calling bullshit on it should be evident from my comments in my preceeding paragraphs.
I went to the Sacramento Bee website to see how their readers are reacting. They think this was great. It’s nearly unanimous.
-“I for one am still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
I’m afraid you’ll have to toe the line for a long, long time.
I guess this means that Bush was the sole survivior of the incident.
(My apologies to anyone I may have missed who posted this earlier in the thread.)
One more, gee :
Runár,
It’s not an “act of violence”, but “throwing a shoe accross a room as an insult”.
It’s not “dislike of certain individuals”, but “the fact that an individual invaded your country, caused several hundred thousand unnecessary deaths, and destroyed your country’s infrastructure and economy.”
Can some people here please stop making these pathetic equations.
#520
No I wasn’t. I was actually refering to the death threats PZ proudly waved around following the affair. This idiot has just one question, how many serious death threats does it take to make a corpse? Death threats are just fun and games when laughed at on a blog. I guess escalation is a concept you can’t understand and easier to laugh at.
PS-ask a fanatic Catholic if the cracker is worth killing for.
ndt@317:
His whole administration is responsible. Congress is responsible. Blair and Blair’s Labour cabinet are responsible. Even the US and British soldiers are in no small way responsible. (“What would happen if they called a war and nobody came?”)
george.w@271
Taking this reasoning to its logical conclusion:
If the police went on strike, and if I were then to kill someone and steal his/her stuff, I would be only “partially responsible”. The police would be “fully responsible”, assuming they knew that their going on strike would result in a drastic surge in criminal activities.
You’re probably going to say this is a strawman, but I honestly think this is the correct logical implication of your statement.
It just doesn’t cut the mustard. People (including Iraqis) are responsible for their own actions. If the authorities are swept away, we are not suddenly less responsible for the murders we commit.
Randy,
now you’re equating the shoe-throwing with a death threat or, in the case of a fanatic Catholic, actual murder.
Methinks your head is escalating a bit too much.
@ Negentropyeater –
You know, though, if the reporter had thrown the pretzels discussed supra, would that have been the equivalent of a death threat?
negentropyeater #520:
Randy,
are you seriously equating PZ’s cracker desecration with Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, causing several hundred thousand unnecessary deaths, and destroying this country’s infrastructure and economy ?
I can’t answer for Randy, but I’ll offer my own answer:
You don’t get it at all. We’re not trying to weigh off one with the other. It doesn’t matter. We’re saying that certain actions are objectionable no matter what.
This I believe to be a key element the rules that have made our societies; that they must not under any circumstances be broken. You don’t take matters into your own hands. Period.
Now, some people feel that these rules can be bent under the right conditions but to me that is misunderstanding an extremely important part of the rules. If the rules can be bent then all bets are off. Who gets to decide when and how to bent them? Slippery slope.
This is, however, what PZ has done, and this is what worries me. Not Zaidi. Not Iraqis. But PZ’s statement. Made on American soil where American (AKA Western Civilized) rules should be observed. Not Iraqi customs and rules.
@530 negentropyeater:
So throwing object at someones head is equivalent with displaying your middle finger?
My main point is that it doesn’t really matter if it’s “justified” in the sense that Bush is an ass. It is still wrong to encourage stuff like this, because it sends the message that violence and aggresive behaviour is OK as long as it’s against “bad people”.
Richard Dawkins has probably turned several hundred of people into atheists. An act that to a believer means he has ensured that they will suffer an eternity of torture. Throwing a shoe at him seems like a small and justified retribution.
But of course we all know that Bush really is responsible for the war in Iraq, whereas Dawkins really have done people a favour. But others don’t share our view, and by applauding violence you are contributing to a society where such things are OK as long as they are justified, giving you a harder time condemning the acts of loonies who think their views are the valid ones.
Suppose the guy had stood up, extended his right middle finger, and yelled, in English, “Fuck you, asshole!”
Would that have been against the rules?
What if he wrote “This is a good-bye kiss, you cur” neatly on a piece of paper, crumpled it into a wad and threw that at W?
Would that have been against the rules? (Where can I find a copy of these inviolate rules, by the way?)
“This is, however, what PZ has done, and this is what worries me. Not Zaidi. Not Iraqis. But PZ’s statement. Made on American soil where American (AKA Western Civilized) rules should be observed. Not Iraqi customs and rules.”
Yep. Concern troll.
Slippery slope? From shoe (or pies) to murder ? From ridicule to death threats ? Is a clown act violent ?
Consider me very happy indeed that I don’t live in US. I’m quite happy to live in a country where throwing a cream pie (or shoe) in somebody’s face isn’t considered on equal footing with lynching. It’s a “civilized” (I’m actually wondering what that means, when the US considers invading another country without provocation and against international law civilized) western country, in case you’re wondering.
That’s not why Zaida did it. It’s not that he doesn’t agree with Bush, it’s that Bush did evil acts to Zaida’s country. Bush is the shoe-thrower’s military enemy.
Not everything that people can agree with has to be outright heroic. I mean, please.
Does it even hurt to be hit by a shoe at such a distance? It wasn’t a steel-tipped Doc Martin’s, after all…
I’d have preferred a cream pie, but a shoe is within the realm of the ethically sustainable.
Evidence, please.
So what? I honestly don’t see your point.
I’m not sure how much that even helped. It may, in sum, have been counterproductive.
Two crimes here: 1) packing ammo into a ship full of civilians; 2) sinking a ship full of civilians. It’s an evil-against-evil situation.
I don’t see why an act of war automatically can’t be an act of terrorism. That doesn’t make the slightest sense.
Why didn’t the Busheviki bring them up a single time? Why did they make up accusations about WMD instead?
You are a strange person, Mr Kellogg, with a strange brain.
Except how to spell it, apparently. :-°
Then why didn’t he officially start planning the day he was sworn in? And why hasn’t he shown any sign of wanting to do the same thing to, say, North Korea?
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
When it seriously hurts or does any lasting damage (whichever comes first).
I mean… duh. :-|
@Sven DiMIlo:
Very easy. It’s in this collection of rules we call the law, provided you live in any Western European country, the US, Canada and many other places. You may have heard of it.
Also defining what actions would be permissable is, ultimately, very easy: let the courts decide.
Ofcourse everyone will have their own thresholds in this regard, but I, for one, certainly think that Zaidi was doing way more than just “insulting”, but this is really beside my main point.
No, one is a throwing a shoe at someone accross a room insult, the other a finger insult. Not the same level of insult.
There are different levels of insults, as there are different levels of violence and as there are different levels of crime.
I’d say Zaidi’s insult is the highest level of insult, and it’s in response to Bush’s crime which is the highest level of crime
I dislike Bush. I dislike policies. I hate we are in Iraq.
Still, I’m glad we have a President who can dodge a goddamn shoe. He’s been an embarrassment to this country for far too long.
Finally, he’s done something right.
“ask a fanatic Catholic if the cracker is worth killing for”
Anyone who thinks a cracker is worth killing for is, to be polite, fucking nuts. No one has ever actually done such a thing. Oh wait…
Laws and courts? Ah.
Ever hear of Martin Luther King Jr.?
Mahatma Gandhi?
Henry David Thoreau?
Or is it only laws about “violence” that must be obeyed? And who decides what constitutes “violence?” Can I throw a wad of paper at somebody? A tomato? Certainly not a shoe. A fuzzy slipper?
(Feel free to treat all this as rhetorical, since I don’t really care that much.)
Runár,
do you or anyone have any evidence that Dawkins has caused some people atrocious suffering ? Now ask yourself the same question about Bush.
And it’s not because some lunatics equate the two that you need to defend them.
The idea that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act isn’t one I, or the US legal system gets behind. Sorry Frederik Rosenkjær. In the US, certain acts aren’t objectionable no matter what. Context of actions is weighed. Mens rea + actus reus. We look at the state of mind, mitigating circumstances, defenses, and exculpations. The law isn’t black and white. Wishing doesn’t make it so. The law recognizes the need for people to take situations into their own hands. It places limits on people’s behavior, but looks at the stepping outside those limits in the context of the person’s circumstances.
PZ, on American soil, is completely allowed by our societal norms to applaud a shoe or two being tossed at our lame duck. We don’t live in a society that says things are “right” or “wrong” based on the action, rather than weighing the action in context.
Speaking for myself, I do consider it an act of violence – a fully justified and laudable act of violence by a citizen of an occupied country against a foreign aggressor. My only criticism of Zaida is that he threw shoes and not a grenade.
The more reserved part of me is saying, well, it’s not right to throw things at people at news conferences or elsewhere.
The rest of me is cheering “woo-hoo!!”. Sometimes words just don’t cut it…the shoe got the point across nicely.
In case you missed it, the shoe-throwing incident happened in Iraq, where the laws were written by Paul Bremer for the benefit of the US oil industry. Iraqi citizens have no obligation to follow laws imposed on them by foreign powers.
The Iraqi people deserve to throw shoes at all of us. Bush is surely an idiot, but he’s our idiot and we essentially rolled over while he did what he did. Bravo to the Iraqi journalist. It’s unfortunate that Bush actually dodged the shoe, that would have been comedic gold.
Ah, man, come on !
What did Zaidi intend by throwing his shoe ? Murder ? Concussion ?
Sure, when I intend to go and murder my neighbor, I go there armed with a deadly size-10 shoe.
We need to institute shoe-control laws people. No shoes for you until you go through a criminal background check. Oh, and we need to do the same for those deadly cream pies.
Will somebody think of the children !
I just watched some stupid woman call in to CNN Headline News to comment on this and said the reporter is “ungrateful for the american servicemen who are trying to help those people”.
Yes I’m sure they enjoyed the bombings, the detaining of their loved one’s in the night, the checkpoints, the american companies stealing their oil Blackwater murdering them. Yeah Bush was lucky it was just shoes. Good on the guy.
Like several of the posters here, I disagree very much with this post. I’m not going to say I lost respect for PZ because of it, because I didn’t, and I’m definitely not going to defend Bush or say that he doesn’t deserve to have shoes thrown at him. Sure, whatever. He’s killed a lot of people. He and a lot of people in his administration should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and, if found guilty, jailed for life.
But I disagree with condoning violence. While al Zaidi’s action was very clearly meant as a dire insult and not an assault, I consider throwing heavy things at people a violent act. Surely it’s a mild one. I sympathize with his intentions, to the extent that I can (given that I, thankfully, have no experience with living in an occupied country), and I actually do think it was very brave. I also don’t think his action was the right one, or that other people should do it. I think those opinions can coexist peacefully. I also think a lot of people here are allowing a very rightful and understandable hatred of Bush to supersede their more civilized and reasoned ideals (not all of the shoe-throwing-condoners, but those who are saying that it would be justice/right for Bush to be murdered horribly by x y z etc.).
My grand-dad used to tell me sories about how during the occupation he would keep eggs for about 6 months until they got nice and smelly and then with some friends they’d go and shoot them at the heads of Germans, military and civilians.
My grand-dad actually did eventually throw more dangerous things at the German military and government officials.
For this he got the medal of the legion d’honneur.
John Scanlon FCD @ # 378: … W. has had more practice ducking thrown objects than you might have supposed.
If you read about his upbringing by Barbara Bush, reportedly known within the dynasty as “she who must be feared”, this and other aspects of Boy George’s character will be clarified.
I’ve tried calling the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 to urge Dubious to call for the release of Muthathar al Zaidi, but get only a busy signal.
neg:
I evidently missed this earlier, but thanks for…
I can’t help but think that this is the most fitting of endings to Bush’s failed presidency. If he had been assassinated it would have lead to many problems, but this was just the right amount of non-violence with maximum insult. I would think that most of the world would have offered up their best patent leathers. Bush just laughed it off and said he wasn’t bothered by it. I think that has been his problem from the start, he’s not bothered by how his actions have affected so many people.
That, you see, is where that so-called line is.
Grenade = death(s), real wounds = violence
I, for one, wouldn’t condone that. I might have understood the reason for it (the guy invaded his country, killing thousands of people, probably some he knew), but I would find it quite sad rather than laudable.
On the other hand:
thrown shoe (or pie) = maybe slight real bruise, mostly ego bruising = ridicule
Is an acceptable way to make your disapproval heard. Nobody gets hurt except Mr. Bush’s (and maybe some americans’) ego. I find it laudable because it actually shows restraint while being quite efficient at showing disapproval. It’s not, you will note, how the insurgents show their disapproval of the american presence in Iraq. All in all, I think most troops in Iraq would rather get a few shoes feably thrown at them by journalists and students rather than suicide bombers.
Also, I would be deeply worried if ridicule and insult suddenly become unacceptable ways of expressing your disapproval of politicians in western, so-called civilized nations.
I don’t think anyone here is saying that. I don’t think it would be right for Bush to be murdered. It would be right for him to be killed as an act of war by the people he made war on.
Americans should be trying to impeach and convict Bush. Iraqis should be trying to kill him.
Can all the anti-shoe-throwing people in this thread at least say as a preambule to their comments that they have no fucking clue what it feels like to live in an occupied country nor are they capable of imagining it ?
For example, they can’t even imagine what the French, Belgians, Dutch, Poles, etc… must have felt like when they were occupied by the Germans. That’s too difficult to imagine.
And what about the Vietnamese or Algerians when they were occupied by the French. Also too difficult.
Or the Iraqi who are still being occupied by the Americans. Also difficult.
So if you can’t imagine any of this, why are you commenting about the action of this Iraqi journalist ?
That reminds me of an incident that happened after the end of the Cold War. Russia was pulling it’s troops out of Czochoslovakia – and the Russian government wanted monetary compensation from Czechoslovakia for the bases they were vacating.
There are still Americans who think we did the Iraqi people a favor and that they should be grateful. It’s sickening, really.
I meant its not it’s. Someone throw a shoe at me, or at least a grammar reference book.
Er… negentropy eater, that would go ahead and apply to the shoe-throwing condoners too. I think everyone present is perfectly qualified to offer an opinion on the matter, and on the question of whether PZ (a person whose context a lot of us probably have a much easier time imagining) should be condoning it. I don’t think that the fact that someone is in a terrible situation means that their actions are no longer subject to the moral judgment of other people.
Frederik,
Well, except you’re not saying that, because you already said actions like these are justifiable if for “a ‘practical’ purpose such as self-defense.” Evidently you think there can be good reasons to lob your shoes at someone–you just disapprove of al-Zaidi’s reasons.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
But three lefts do….
Bill,
I go even further, Bush did this war because he needed to keep the credit bubble from arriving at its Minsky moment in 2002. His economists new that, there were already dangerous signs of it exploding. He needed a war to keep it growing for at least 8 years. Too bad for him, the Minsky moment arrived just a few months before the end of his term.
Damn! More blockquote fail (@558)! I know I didn’t leave the close tag out; must’ve made a typo within it. I seem to be doing that more often; I hope I haven’t had some sort of intracranial event…
ROTFL! There were three Trotskyist parties just a few years ago, and I see ads by at least one Revolutionary Left Party all the time… Leftmost big party, sure, but small parties can’t be ignored over here the way they can be in the USA.
Small. Very small, I think.
Remember how he reacted to his unflattering portrayal in Expelled!? He laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed…
:-D
The slippery-slope argument is a logical fallacy. It’s even listed in Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit.
But…but…but… That would be violent. I mean, those books are heavy objects with pointy corners. It might poke an eye out.
I don’t think he meant that you couldn’t judge the act’s morality. He was talking about americans who still thought that they did iraqis a favor by invading their country.
This is what we cannot really understand without being able to imagine living in an occupied country, not the shoe-throwing per se.
Angel Kaida :
Agreed, but then those people better understand what that terrible situation is before they emit their moral jusgement. Otherwise, that judgement is not worth more than an ignorant opinion.
Please read my post #556. What’s your moral judgement on my Grand-dad ?
lol. Fair enough. It also means extreme-right parties have their importance too (I remember last french election how Le Pen’s party pushed the vote towards Sarkozi. My french collegues were quite mad about that).
Here in Canada, small parties don’t mean much. I mean our lefmost party of any importance is the the NDP, but we do have a Marxist-Leninist party.
Bill Dauphin # @ 558: … I don’t think the lack of any strong move to counter Bush means Dems were acting like junior warmongers; I think it has more to do with them simply not being willing to believe Bush was quite that crazy…
So how do you (how can you) account for Nancy Pelosi’s consistent obstruction for the last 23 months of the obvious Constitutional responsibility of the House of Representatives in the face of “high crimes and misdemeanors”?
Dammit you bastards, its Doc MartEn’s!
Whereas, I love Pharyngula AND don’t always agree with everything that is said, this time the Professor has gone too far.
Throwing a shoe reminds me of the Austin Powers movie, where Austin remarks about the shoe thrown at him, “A shoe, really?!?! Come on.”
Who gets to decide when throwing a shoe is justified?
Is it justified when a Professor mocks a religion and a person’s deeply held beliefs by eating a cracker?
Is it justified when a Professor does not take an active enough role in:
– helping the poor
– stopping any war
– making vague claims as to helping mankind by studying squid, when there are greater direct benefits he could give by studying mankind, itself
– perventing a student from getting a bad grade
etc ad infinitum
The point isn’t that I agree with any of the above as being justifiable (I don’t). The point is somebody does.
Therefore, in the spirit of the Professors cracker idea,
I propose that anytime anybody is listening to the Professor – as in a class. talk or presentation – if you personally can come up with a justification that you believe merits a shoe throw, then you should do it.
Throw your shoe in such a way that it misses. I, as opposed to the Professor, don’t want anybody getting hurt by this act.
However, if the Professor on his blog admits that he was being sarcastic, or more probably, just wrong, then please call off the attack of the shoes.
If the Professor does not, then I, at least, promise to use soft fuzzy slippers when I lob them at his ivory tower, so as not to hurt the man. I really like the blog.
@572,
Shooting things at the heads of civilians because they are of the wrong nationality is shitty teenage behavior, and you didn’t explain too clearly about the more dangerous things he was throwing but it sounds like it was an act of war? Acts of war are also shitty, but that’s because war is, and I wouldn’t blame your grandfather for that. *shrug* And there are a lot of situations that I find unimaginable, other than living in an occupied country. Sometimes we have to do the best we can with the data we have.
Thread, meet winner.
:-D
Yeah, right.*
* Thus proving, as first observed by the linguist John C. Wells, that two positives make a negative.
Probably you’re just more tired than usual. Also, “blockquote” is an astonishingly hard word to type.
“shitty teenage behavior”
I can’t read. For some reason I had the impression that your grandfather was 16 and I missed the eggs being held for 6 months. I have no idea what got those two things mixed up.
My righteous indignation meter just exploded.
“making vague claims as to helping mankind by studying squid, when there are greater direct benefits he could give by studying mankind, itself”
… possibly the biggest turd in that post, though there are many competing.
Yes, let all biologists who dare to study “lower” forms of life just about face and do something else that is vaguely claimed to be superior.
Very interesting comments… Maybe we should ask: was the action of this journalist a violent act or a (culturally appropriate) act of protest? It was most likely a heartfelt act. In the last five years he must have seen a of of pain and agony in his country. Yes, most deaths were by the hand of fellow Iraqi’s, but without Washington’s decision to invade Iraq this civil war would not have been fought. Bush can joke about this protest – how distasteful! – but that man probably lost colleagues and relatives in this war. I know I would be pissed if people died around me.
Ouch. I committed a hypercorrectivism against my own memory. :-( I thought “‘marten’, as in ‘cable-eating mustelid’?” and concluded that was unlikely…
If you don’t understand a squid, how can you ever hope to understand a mammal?
This shoe thrower was a hero. Anyone conscious during the last 5 years, with an an ounce of human empathy, would see that. If you can’t see it, you’ve absolutely lost all sense of proportion. Depend on it.
If I got within 20 feet of Bush … I’d likely do nothing, despite my strong feelings. That guy had guts I just don’t have. What a gloriously quixotic act! Respect.
Come on, how could Zaidi had thrown the second shoe? There had to be a second shoeman!!!
Kemist,
It’s not that they think that they are doing Iraqis a favour, it’s that they don’t seem to understand that many in an occupied country consider resitance to the occupying force a moral duty.
Maybe this shoe-throwing act is a polite way of reminding them. It could have been much worse.
We science types would much rather have fun with human experimental subjects, but because of this pesky “ethics” stuff, we have to study boring things like rats and squids. [/pouts]
[disclaimer : I do not think squids are boring. Don’t throw shoes at me !]
Where did Pr. Myers say that he wished for Mr. Bush to get hurt by the shoe ? I rather think he thought it right for Mr. Bush to get the insults he so richly deserves rather than be considered the good guy. Insult != violence
Good on you. Or, you could just come here and express your disappointment. See if that works.
Because you see, Mr. Bush doesn’t have a blog on which Mr. al-Zaida could go and be heard expressing his contempt for Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush, and most americans, think they were right invading Mr. al-Zaida’s country, and indeed that Mr. al-Zaida should be happy about it.
@ #572 negentropyeater
The problem with people like Angel Kaida is that context is not a consideration for them. They are creatures of moral absolutes.
For illustrative purposes – the notion that lying is wrong. For the moral absolutist – lying is wrong, regardless of context. No situation allows for a mistruth to be told without it being “bad.” For those who don’t subscribe to this mentality- lying is an acceptable response depending on the context. In the context of the law – lying under oath is punishable. Lying under oath because someone is compelling your testimony by threatening to kill your husband is duress, and is a mitigating factor, if not completely exculpatory. The absolutist would want both lying under oath sorts to face the same punishment, because both are “wrong” because lying is “bad.”
@589,
What? Fuck off. I am absolutely not a moral absolutist.
rofl. Pun or bad choice of words ? ;)
@591,
Bad joke to mitigate the tone of indignation…
Er, Kemist, while I’m talking to you, could you either go back on your claim that most Americans think we did the right thing in Iraq or (the much less desirable option) cite? Because … I desperately want that not to be true.
In 1835, Richard Lawrence attempted to assainiate Andrew Jackson. He drew up a gun, pointed at Jackson and it misfired. The drew up second gun, pulled the trigger and it mifired. Legend has it Jackson began to beat his assialiant with his cane and his aides had to restrain him. Represntative Davy Crockett then helped restrain Lawrence.
In 2008, George W. Bush dodged two shoes.
Sorry cupcake. You are a moral absolutist on the subject of ‘condoning violence.’ If you get to say that someone’s act is ‘bad’ because it was violent without regard to the circumstance – well – fuck you right back, princess. We, as a society, pardon a lot of violence based on the context. Sure – you’re all manner of “sympathetic,” you claim, but al Zaida is bad, and PZ is bad because he doesn’t condemn the man for tossing a shoe or two at a guy.
Do you think some violence is perfectly peachy, sweetheart? Is there a circumstance where you would condone the action of one man throwing his shoe at another man?
Angel Kaida,
yes my grand-dad enrolled in the resistance and actually killed a few German soldiers. That’s how he got his medal.
And throwing eggs at German civilians ? I think that was very polite considering the gestapo was carrying “ordres de requisition” (sorry don’t know the englsh term) on many small businesses, hotels, restaurants, shops, and German civilians were being put in place of French civilians.
No, you really seem to have difficulties to understand what an occupation feels like.
Hmmm. Did some research, and actually, my spologies, that is not true anymore (although I’m finding that an over 30% approval, with the present state of things, rather disappointing…). It was true until about 2005.
source
Bah, that’s mainly the die hard republicans that wouldn’t say a bad thing about their party or their party’s people no matter what is going on.
negentropyeater:
“do you or anyone have any evidence that Dawkins has caused some people atrocious suffering ? Now ask yourself the same question about Bush.
And it’s not because some lunatics equate the two that you need to defend them.”
You’re missing my point. I actually specified the difference between the two views(Dawkins, Bush). And the latter is obviously more justified.
To repeat what I actually mean: By applauding and accepting acts of violence(even if they are legit in your eyes), you are basically giving the message that violence and rudeness are ok, as long as they are “justified”. What is considered justification varies from person to person, and people that think differently from you might consider it more OK to repeat such acts of violence in another setting, once the act itself has been condoned by people like yourself.
Like you I had a grandfather that was active in the resistance during ww2. He was an officer and the leader for the military opposition in the western parts of my country, while at the same time being a double agent, pretending to work for the gestapo. And like your grandfather, he certainly threw more dangerous objects than shoes at the germans. But what didn’t do was engage in violent acts just for the sake of inflicting pain or injury.
Angel Kaida,
It’s not that many Americans think that they are doing Iraqis a favour, most, such as yourself, don’t.
It’s that they don’t seem to understand that many in an occupied country consider resitance to the occupying force a moral duty.
Maybe this shoe-throwing act is a polite way of reminding them. It could have been much worse.
I fully admit I am trying to goad the scientists and hardline liberals with some of the comments.
I believe fully in basic science (including cephalopod research).
The point is, as a public figure, e.g. Bush, PZ, there will ALWAYS be people who are NOT crazy that will rabidly disagree with you.
The ‘Shoe Thrower’ was, undoubtedly, egregiously harmed by Bush’s war, however, the act of courage in that room, as bitter as it is for me to say this, is for the head of the most powerful nation in the world to take questions from a free press.
The free press is Bush’s blog. He has to answer to it everyday.
When we condemn the actions of the Shoe Thrower, we are protecting the role of the free press. The heads of government, professors, anybody in authority, should all have a reasonable expectation to be free from harm BUT NOT FREE FROM CRITICISM.
They should also not be free from the rule of law. Don’t like what Bush did – then file a complaint for crimes against humanity. There is a system of accountability. Not a perfect system, but a reasonable one that can be modified.
Don’t like the system and feel that it can’t ever be modified by any other means, then declare a revolution. You could call your document the “Declaration of Independence.” Just don’t be surprised or indignant when well meaning people start throwing a lot more than shoes at you.
In the meantime, PZ’s comments are grossly wrong, and he should retract them. Critical thinking can be a bummer.
@594,
Well, kind of, but in the situations I’d consider as justification for violence, throwing a shoe would probably be futile so I don’t know how useful my condoning of it would be. There are survival situations where it’s basically a question of acting now and figuring out whether what you did was moral later. And by the way, I did not say that either al-Zaidi (that’s his name) or PZ was “bad.” All I know about al-Zaidi is that he did a brave thing that I disagree with, and I already know PZ is awesome. I disagree with PZ’s statement here because it amounts to condoning an act of violence and, in fact, encouraging future acts of violence. As a rule, I disagree with acts of violence, and it takes a lot to mitigate one – and I think that’s okay. I think it’s better to err on the side of nonviolence. It’s not like my moral judgment is inflexible or like it’s going to matter to the people involved – that’s part of why it’s not bothering me too terribly to discuss this without complete knowledge.
@595,
Politeness isn’t the question here. Neither is sympathy. If I had the *courage* to do what the man did – to throw a shoe at an evil man who had killed people I knew, with the full knowledge that I would very likely be beaten and tortured for it – I would, and morality be damned. But I don’t pretend that I’m a paragon of morality, so I don’t consider the fact that *I might do the same in that situation* to make something moral. It’s basically a question of what your sense of morality is based on, right? Mine’s based on a certain set of principles, and when the principles conflict with each other or with emotion or (Cthulhu forbid!) with reality, I have to hack through and prioritize the best I can. That’s complex reality for you, though – I think that’s what we all end up doing.
Oh, and Diagoras, could you please stop calling me feminine and infantilizing names? Much as I enjoy pet names, in the context of argument I find it sort of sexist and offensive. Thanks.
Granted the reporter is not an American citizen. For those of us who are, I think the least that we can do is uphold our constitutional ideals. We don’t police the content of expression, just the form it takes. If it’s okay to throw shoes at Bush, it should be okay to throw shoes at anyone. That’s what freedom of expression means. People do not get to decide for themselves who it is okay to throw shoes at. It’s either an acceptable action or it isn’t. If people feel that Bush ought to be held responsible for his actions, then, that’s the reason we have courts. Punishments should be meted out in a systematic fashion by juries, not by individuals with grudges.
Pierce:
First, impeachment is an entirely separate question from whether the Iraq invasion can be laid at the feet of congressional Democrats. Neither Nancy Pelosi nor any other Dem was Speaker of the House in 2002, nor was any member of Congress from either party driving the invasion agenda. Even if we stipulate that the Dems are somehow culpable for failing to pursue impeachment (which they couldn’t possibly have done ’til 2006), that doesn’t make them culpable for the 2003 invasion, nor for the Charlie-Foxtrot that followed.
Next, impeachment is a political action, not law enforcement, and as such it must be judged according to political costs and benefits, not “justice,” which is the province of some other forum. Impeachment doesn’t punish crimes; all it does is remove the president from office. Even if they’d started on first working day of 2006, and even with the best possible combination of outcomes, it’s unlikely they could’ve successfully removed Bush by any meaningful amount of time before the scheduled end of his term (Clinton’s impeachment only progressed as “quickly” as it did because they knew all along they didn’t have the votes to remove him). So impeachment would’ve accomplished the cubed root of fuck-all, while wiping out an entire session of Congress (and yes, even though they didn’t meet unrealistic hopes of instantly ending the war or whistling up universal healthcare, the Congress did accomplish some good stuff). Plus which, the inevitable backlash against the attempt to summarily end Bush’s second term might well have doomed Obama’s campaign and ironically given us the de facto third term of the Bushmen. So tell me again why it’s a bad thing Ms. Pelosi (who, after all, is a legislator, not a prosecutor) sidestepped this pyrrhic victory?
But further, it probably wouldn’t have been a pyrrhic victory, but a pyrrhic defeat: Even if the Dems could somehow have scraped up enough votes in the House to bring charges, no way in Hell was there ever any hope of the Senate voting to remove Bush. With Joe LIEberman in place, the Dems probably couldn’t have gotten a simple majority of guilty votes, let alone the required 2/3.
I’ve spoken to members of Congress who despise everything the Bush/Cheney regime stands for, but nevertheless didn’t think impeachment was a prudent use of the Congress’ time and political capital, and I tend to agree: I desperately hope there’s some sort of justice for Bush (beyond the undying contempt in which he will certainly be held by history), but I want the federal government focused on repairing the damage he did, instead of meting out punishment while the untreated wounds go untreated.
Runár,
Do you really believe this journalist threw these shoes accross the room “just for the sake of inflicting pain or injury” ?
But how can Mr. al-Zaida, an iraqi, ask for Mr. Bush’s accountability ? He is not an american. He didn’t vote that moron in. I didn’t vote for that moron.
Lawyers, courts and law systems are pretty sarce when you’re on the losing side of a war. You seriously think Bush and Cheney will one day get to visit the La Haie prison ? You’re seriously deluded if you think so.
If I’d done what he did and the worse I got was people spitting and throwing a couple shoes at me, I’d consider myself quite lucky.
And why this level of indignation for a damn shoe thrown at a moronic president, when troops in Iraq get bombs and bullets thrown at them daily (you know, real violence), for pretty much the same reasons ?
Arrgh! Another example of unfinished in-process editing (@604):
…should, of course, have been:
@606,
To be fair, I think everyone in the thread would agree in being much more indignant about bullets than about shoes. This is just interesting because a.) it’s easier to make a case for either side and b.) it is possible to have kind of a proxy discussion with this. As negentropyeater has been discussing, there is the possibility to use this situation as a test case for the moral rights of the victims of warfare. Things like that.
@negentropyeater (#556) For this he got the medal of the legion d’honneur.
Not the medal of the legion d’oeufeur?
negentropyeater:
“Do you really believe this journalist threw these shoes accross the room “just for the sake of inflicting pain or injury” ?”
(how do you make qoutes???)
Yes, I do. I think it was simply an outlet for frustation and revenge in the form of a violent act. He certainly can’t have thought it would improve the situation of his people or himself in any possible way(as opposed to the real resistance of our grandfathers).
#602 – If your response to an argument that your position was that of moral absolutism, was an utterance of “fuck off” – I think it’s fair to insult right back. As if you could not understand basic concepts. As per the understanding of a child. I made no assumptions about your gender (Angel being a gender-neutral name. cupcake, princess[it’s the tiara that makes them silly, and the entitlement issues {unless they have majestic pants, and then the title of princess is completely an awesome bit of praise}], and sweetheart also being gender neutral.) – or the ability to argue based on that. No sexism, intended. Just the infantilization. And the assumption you wished to be insulted. A tersely phrase “fuck off” told me that. Otherwise – you’d have tossed out an argument grounded in why your argument was not a position of moral absolutism, and how your prior posts were not meant to convey such a stance.
Ridiculous comments advocating violence and comparing Bush to Hitler show an intolerance at the basis of their supposed tolerance. – John@219
Whereas lies about people comparing Bush to Hitler show spotless moral integrity.
Drunk drivers are in a very meaningful sense responsible for any deaths they cause in a car crash. But I think most liberal-minded people would accept that (in a typical case) it’s not exactly a considerable degree of responsibility. – Count Nefarious
Either you make a habit of drinking and driving, or you’re insane.
There’s no reason to believe Bush consciously intended to kill hundreds of thousands of people. – Count Nefarious
There’s absolutely no reason to believe he gave – or gives – a shit how many people died.
@611,
Oh! That was supposed to be an argument? It looked to me like an insult underlaid by an ungrounded assumption, and so I treated it with the amount of thought such tripe merits. Hm. My mistake. I trust your confusion has been cleared up now.
(P.S. You know Princess isn’t gender neutral!)
Considering the cultural significance of hitting with shoes in the middle east described earlier, I seriously doubt there was any intent to physically hurt.
It was gesture of disrespect, like spitting. If he really wanted to hurt him, he could have picked up a rock and thrown it at him. Then we could talk about a bit of violence rather than an insult meant to show contempt.
So where do you draw the line ? Is spitting at somebody violence ? How about pointing and laughing ? Shouting booooo ?
And what if there’s nothing you can possibly do to help your people ? Would you lie down and take it like a good moral citizen to obey laws that are imposed by invaders ? Or would you perhaps spit on the bastard’s face to show your contempt ? And thinking you’re quite in your right to do so ?
And what do you think of the iraqi insurgency ? Is it a real resistance or something else ?
So, I don’t buy it that the reason Bush is not going to be prosecuted is because he controls the world or wields all the power; he will not be prosecuted simply because there is no evidence. – gleaner63
What garbage. According to the vast majority of international lawyers, the invasion was illegal under international law. Bush is prima facie guilty of planning and waging aggressive war, contrary to the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Charter of the United Nations. He won’t be prosecuted because of his position, and American insistence that the USA is above international law.
Of course, for the eggs.
The Iraqi people should give this journalist the medal of the legion de la chaussure (the Arabic translation I ignore) for his act of bravery.
For those who said that the Bush apologist do not understand what it is like to live in an occupied country, I disagree.
The United States was invaded by europeans. You see, native americans use to live here for thousands of years but than the europeans invaded the country, occupied it, and refuse to leave. today, they are still here.
these europeans are not even greatful for the natives assistance in helping them to understand the land and not starve.
the war was justified as Saddam killed tens of thousands of his own people. After Saddam was removed, most of the Iraqis died at the hands of terrorists who were killing themselves and killing others, not Bush.
This is why there is more peace in Iraq now than ever before – Moron Michael
The war involved hundreds of thousands of deaths, you stupid shit. And there is not “more peace in Iraq now than ever before”, you ignorant scumbag.
Compared to Colbert at the WHC dinner, this guy went pretty easy on Bush.
@ 618:
But you see, Bush apologists are generally descendants of the european invaders, so they have past experience of being the occupants, not of living under occupation. I somehow do not think this contributes to give you empathy towards populations living under occupation.
Ah no ? I’m sure Obama got the message and is going to try to avoid getting a shoe thrown at him during his first press conference in Iraq.
Nick Gott’s mouth-foaming in this thread is known in the trade as displacement anger. In the UK, the Iraq war was Blair’s war, for which all those who made him what he was must take responsibility, i.e. the Guardian, the BBC, Nick Gotts. Bush at least had the sense to get others to lie for him, whereas Blair lied personally and strongly.
But, credit where credit is due: I feel a strong sense of gratitude to people like Gotts: if a Conservative government had done what Blair and Brown did, London would have been burnt to the ground by now – we owe it to the left-wing hypocrites that their anger is so selective. – peter
Peter, it’s never wise to assume that others are as stupid as you are. I recognised Blair for the loathsome right-wing creep he is before he became leader of the Labour Party, and so never voted for him (in 1997 I lived in Wales and voted for a Green/Plaid Cymru candidate, in 2001 and 2005 I was in Scotland and voted SNP). Both before the invasion and after I marched, demonstrated at military bases, wrote letters, gave out leaflets from stalls, and helped organise public meetings against the war. I must admit I did not set fire to any buildings, which you seem to feel would have been the only way to show that I really did oppose the war. Your lies about left-wing selectivity and what would have happened if the government had been Conservative are absurd; opposition to the war in Britain included the largest ever demonstration in the country – but of course you find the fact that it was peaceful a damning indictment of “left-wing hypocrisy”.
By the way, you semi-literate oaf, the possessive of a name that ends in “s” is not formed by placing an apostrophe before that letter.
Rúnar,
You mean like this?
Evidently, like most people, you believe that violence is okay as long as it’s justified. It’s the validity of the justification you object to in al-Zaidi’s case, not the idea of violence per se.
Very strange that the vast majority of Saddam’s killings and human rights abuses was done during the time when the US was supporting the Hussein regime militarily and financially as evidenced by documents from the National Security Archive released in 2003, with full knowledge that the Hussein government was regularly using chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and Kurdish insurgents.
And then Bush went to war because of human rights abuses more than a decade later, when all human rights groups argued that it wasn’t justified on humanitarian grounds ? As Human Rights Watch’s Ken Roth wrote in 2004, despite Hussein’s horrific human rights record, “the killing in Iraq at the time was not of the exceptional nature that would justify such intervention.
It’s unbelievable how some folks like Michael will parrot ignorant and stupid arguments just to defend their oh-so-cherished-leader !
“the war was justified as Saddam killed tens of thousands of his own people”
Bullshit.
Why do people keep talking about freeing the Iraqi people?
That was never the stated goal before the invasion began.
It was claimed that Iraq was in imminent threat the the world.
Only after it was clear that they had lied about pretty much everything did they try the “bringing freedom” to Iraq gambit. Which of course is also a blatant lie.
I thought everybody in that part of the Middle East was a Muslim, but al Zaidi is clearly a Bootist
Looks like they’re not going to toe the line anymore.
Covering your ass with historical revisionism has a long tradition in American Politics.
“Covering your ass with historical revisionism has a long tradition in American Politics.”
Too true. The Bush admin and its apologists have made it into an art form.
Is it only by coincidence that Zaidi had been kidnapped by Islamists not long before. I suspect that he was coerced into throwing shoes and insulting Bush by threats of death by torture if he did not carry out what his kidnappers had demanded. His assault and attempted battery are hardly the stuff of the First Amendment.
In any event, more than 95% of Iraqi civilians that were killed were killed by other Muslims.
The rest were killed by Americans because the enemy wore no uniform and used innocent civilians as shields.
What enemy? Iraq never attacked us.
Is it only by coincidence that Zaidi had been kidnapped by Islamists not long before. I suspect that he was coerced into throwing shoes and insulting Bush by threats of death by torture if he did not carry out what his kidnappers had demanded. His assault and attempted battery are hardly the stuff of the First Amendment.
In any event, more than 95% of Iraqi civilians that were killed were killed by other Muslims.
The rest were killed by Americans because the enemy wore no uniform and used innocent civilians as shields.
Dec. 1994 : DJIA = 3800
Dec. 1999 : DJIA = 11500, an increase of more than 200% in 5 ys
Jan. 2001 : DJIA = 11000, Bush is PotUS
Oct. 2002 : DJIA = 7500, a decrease of 35% since Dec. 1999
At that time, the US Senate votes on the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, when about 75 senators were told in closed session that Saddam Hussein had the means of attacking the eastern seaboard of the U.S. with biological or chemical weapons delivered by unmanned aerial vehicles. War is decided.
Mar. 2003 : DJIA = 8000 Begins Invasion of Iraq
Oct. 2007 : DJIA = 14000, an increase of 100% in 5 years
Dec. 2008 : DJIA = 7800, a decrease of close to 50% in one year.
During the first 20 months of his presidency, Bush and his accolytes only have one obsession : how to reinflate the damn bubble that has already lost 35%.
They need a war, an economic stimulus. 9/11 has just provided them with a perfect excuse, the country is under shock, Americans will accept anything. So they will convince Americans that, rather than sacrifice as Churchill asked the british, they must exercise their patriotic duty by buying all they can get their hands on, houses, SUVs, electronics, etc… And the fed slashes the discount rate to 1% and Bush offers tax cuts, tax rebates, 0% auto financing, and no-doc mortgages.
The result is what they planned for, the DJIA gains 100% in the following 5 years.
Problem is of course that all this fake prosperity built on easy credit and a war was doomed from the start.
Problem is of course that all this fake prosperity built on easy credit and a completely fabricated war was doomed from the start.
Ugg.
Would have been better if the shoes were thrown at Saddam long ago.
So not only Bush and his accolytes illegally invaded a country, fabricating fake evidence, causing several hundred thousand unnecessary deaths, destroying this country’s infrastructure and ruinng its economy, but they planned it from the begining as a way to temporarily reinflate a bubble that could no more, with no consideration whatsoever on possibly also ruining the American economy.
I think he deserves at least a shoe thrown at him.
Bill @ # 604:
Arrgh, I should’ve known better than to engage you about this when I have a lot of work to do – apologies in advance for inadequacies of this reply.
Pls see Nick Gotts’s # 616.
Every Iraqi death attributable to the chaos of US occupation after January 2007 can be laid on Pelosi’s infamous table.
Impeachment is an action of law enforcement – it’s about “high crimes and misdemeanors“, not about having lost enough power to be vulnerable to opponents’ partisan efforts, at least in my copy of the Constitution. The only reasons the Democrats might not have been able to remove Bush in 2007 are the sheer volume of evidence for his numerous and massive crimes, and their own political disorganization and collusion in said crimes (e.g., Pelosi’s assent to torture).
If I committed a murder in ’03, who would accept the kind of excuses you bend over backwards to allow to the Busheviks for my local sheriff if she failed to arrest me when given a chance in ’07 or ’08?
The current House Speaker’s gross dereliction of duty for shallow partisan (mis)calculation is a lasting shame upon the Democrats, whose dedication to the United States and its Constitution can be measured by the strength of their “Dump Pelosi” movement.
To compare the Clinton impeachment to (the first part of) what Bush deserves is to buy into the corporate media’s framing of politics as formula theater. You seem to have a brain – try using it above a “pundit” level, please.
You’ve spoken to
members of Congresscraven political hacks who view their sworn responsibilities to America as a Monopoly game. If you had any serious patriotic impulses, you’d go throw muddy boots at each one of them.This “we’ve got to concentrate on healing” whine is the same sort of crap that Gerald Ford provided with his pardon of Nixon’s crimes against America, duplicated when the perpetrators of Reagan-era terrorism and law-breaking were allowed to get away scot-free. Can anyone deny that this failure to uphold a minimal standard of integrity has something to do with the Republicans’ continuing spree of lawlessness?
What Pierce said. And don’t forget the recent FISA Amendment vote, where Democrats in both houses, including Senator Obama, voted to let Bush get away with warrantless wiretaps. Both parties were the bad guys over the last seven years, and I expect it to remain that way for the foreseeable future.
If Republican politicans are criminals, Democratic politicians are the groupies who write love letters to convicts.
When did PZ get so famous that the ratio of intelligent folks to wingnuts on his blog started to shift in favor of the wingnuts?
#72 Capital Dan:
No, no, no… now is the time for a heeled nation to wound.
Too bad the target had the reflexes of a cockroach.
Of course this means another name for GWB is Caligula
to frederick, Randy, and all the other simpleminded “violence is always wrong” people:
I fully condone Piłsudski’s military, terrorist thugs for turning on their leaders and taking Warsaw, thus beginning the liberation the home of one chunk of my family from occupation and continual cultural genocide at the hand of the Russian Empire
I fully condone La Resistance and their terrorist actions that successfully disrupted the Nazi-occupation-business-as-usual, and therefore helping to defeat the plague that has taken hold in the home of another chunk of my family.
When your country is occupied, the aggressor values your existence as less than that of a cockroach, and the world can’t or won’t help you, you’re not only justified, but have the moral duty to resist by any means necessary.
Iraq has been abused by the U.S. for decades, first by building and propping up Saddam and his regime, and then by removing them and completely destroying what was left of the infrastructure. Zaidi would have been fully justified in blowing the whole entourage to bits, thus making the point that you can’t enslave and murder a nation without suffering serious consequences… but he didn’t. he threw a pair of shoes, knowing full well that the consequences could include being beaten/tortured and even “disappeared” (as opposed to a suicide bomber, who expects glory, fame, and paradise). for that he’s a true hero in my book
The sanctimonious comments here about shoe-throwing being too much like violence to approve of are sickening, especially since at this very moment the brave man who threw his shoes and yelled those perfectly apropos comments, an action the whole world (outside the US) approved of, is being tortured by the US and its puppet Iraqi police. I’m assuming the people making such comments are Americans, since Americans seem to think that actually forcing their politicians and military to quit killing people and destroying lives is “inappropriate” (what a sickeningly overused word) or “stooping to their level” or something. Just like Americans also think the Americans torturing and slaughtering Iraqis are “just doing their jobs.” Absolutely sickening.
I am just glad that the rest of the world doesn’t see things that way.
I almost got through, but had to stop a bit early, so forgive me if this was already posted. The reporter who threw the shoe certainly was brave – there may be (is?) evidence that he has been tortured (whoops – I mean he engaged in horseplay like college students): http://firedoglake.com/2008/12/15/shoe-thrower-being-tortured/
And: Real Genius – Mr Iraqi shoe-thrower guy: http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2008/12/15/loafers-and-jokers-mr-iraqi-shoe-thrower-guy-commercial-parody/
I fully condone La Resistance and their terrorist actions that successfully disrupted the Nazi-occupation-business-as-usual, and therefore helping to defeat the plague that has taken hold in the home of another chunk of my family.
I always wonder why more americans don’t think back to Doolittle’s bombing run on Tokyo, and even though the targets were “military/industrial”, realize that the purpose of that attack run was primarily psychological in nature.
or maybe think back to the firebombings later in the war of various cities both in europe and japan…
*shrug*
for those that haven’t read much Steinbeck, he wrote an excellent short story on this very subject called “The Moon is Down”.
what’s really fun is trying to apply the story to any given “real” conflict, and deciding who plays which side.
Of course this means another name for GWB is Caligula
funny, I always tended to compare him to Commodus.
“Unpopular”? Unprovoked invasion is a war crime. Bush, Blair and the rest deserve more than shoes, they deserve hanging.”- Zarquon
You’re too kind. No really. Bush deserves 50 years in Iraqi prison (and, assuming it is mathematically possible for him to survive), Then execution; not quick and easy either.
We can talk bad Presidents, But Grant ain’t got SHIT on this fella. I’ll love to live to be 100 and read about this in my great grandchildren’s history books, about this event in the president’s history. But by then the shoe may have morphed into a small butter knife or something lol.
I have to agree with Pierce and ndt that most of the Dems acted as enablers – another reason Bush will almost certainly never face justice for his crimes. On the bright side, I expect a rash of copycat shoe-throwing whenever he dares to appear in public. Bush’s swift reflexes make it a real test of skill – kudos to whoever first scores a direct hit!
The Grauniad today has a short article “How to insult George Bush wherever you are in the world”. However, all the culturally-specific alternatives to shoe-throwing are mere gestures.
When people say “pussification of america” they most certainly mean The Dems, that much is certain. Maybe now, with the Obama Aministration, they will stop being spineless floor mats for the insane.
But honestly, that is an insult to wemon- they have vertebra collumns and intact nervous systems, for the most part. It seems that they are mutually exclusive in the political world, however- subject to change, we can hope.
“On the bright side, I expect a rash of copycat shoe-throwing whenever he dares to appear in public.”-Gotts
Boy, i can’t wait untill GW makes an appearance in the Netherlands *rubbing hands gleefully*
I couldn’t watch the video on my ancient home computer (*pets computer gently in appreciation for years of service*; laptop: *chug* whir*), it had to wait till I was able to view it from my office. I may be alone, but I didn’t think his reflexes were all that impressive. The shoes were thrown from far enough away, it seems to me, that someone with really good reflexes could have even caught them.
/reflex snob
Incidentally, Jerome Karabel’s The Chosen has a Yale newspaper photo from when Bush was a student there. He’s playing football or rugby, and the caption is something teasing like “Bush executing an illegal move.” Sign of things to come.
To JadeHawk @#645:
I never said “violence is always wrong”. You’re addressing a strawman.
We’re saying that certain actions are objectionable no matter what. – Frederik Rosenkjær
I never said “violence is always wrong”. – Frederik Rosenkjær
So throwing shoes is always wrong, but violence isn’t? What bizarre thought-processes you have.
For all those who denied al-Raidi’s courage, and all those bleating about how the invasion has given Iraqis freedom:
Shoe thrower ‘beaten in custody’
Frederik #654,
Perhaps, but then can you please explain what you meant with this affirmation in your comment #535:
“We’re saying that certain actions are objectionable no matter what.”
Gee, Nick you were quicker than me damnit ;-)
#656
Do I hear G.W. saying :
“please, do not beat Zaidi up too harshly, let’s be civilized, we have strong ethical principles in our country that should apply in our colonies, but if you want to give him a good waterboarding session, be my guest”
No matter how much people whine about the shoe-throwing, it’s still the case that Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq. That makes him a legitimate target for pretty much _anything_ that gets hurled at him if he’s stupid enough to prance around Iraq and expect the locals to be glad to see him.
I admire the thrower twice over: firstly because he had the courage to take action when so many others have shown Bush unearned deference; secondly because he showed restraint and took a symbolic action to insult and humiliate Bush rather than attempting lethal violence.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled clutching of pearls. Oh, the rudeness. Tut tut.
I’m scared to come back to this thread as I just replaced my misplaced righteous indignation meter that blew up a few hundred comments ago.
Is it safe?
@661: no, some people here still think it’s shockingly wrong to hurl shoes at the guy who invaded and destroyed your country.
At least now we know who’ll roll over and collaborate when their country gets invaded. We’ll update the list we keep on the black helicopters.
actually “pussy” is not a reference to women, but is short for “pusillanimous”:
And while that may apply to the Dems for not standing up to the Rethuglicans, I think it really does apply to all Americans. We truly are now afraid of our own shadows, willing to be strip searched in airports and have our toothpaste confiscated based on some vague threat of being able to make a small smoke bomb. “…Home of the brave…” no longer. The terrorists won, americans are now completely terrorized.
I saw Bush speaking about this ‘attack’ on the news last night. He laughed it off, and said something like ‘I don’t know what the guy’s beef is’.
Which pretty much summed up the whole thing for me. Bush can’t think why an Iraqi might be pissed off with him. Or perhaps I should just have stopped at ‘Bush can’t think’.
Pierce (@639):
Checked that post; nothing there about Pelosi or Congress, only comments about Bush’s crimes. (Though to be fair, I see that Nick expresses some passing agreement with your position in a later post.)
Not unless you can show me both that starting impeachment proceedings (or, for that matter, anything else within Pelosi’s power) would have brought the war to a swifter conclusion and that a reasonable person in Pelosi’s position would have been sure of that.
It’s impossible to prove anything about an alternate version of history, of course, but it seems extremely more likely to me that devoting the full attention of the government to punishing past crimes would have accomplished the cubed root of fuck-all in terms of correcting the problems of the present or near future. Even though I can’t prove it, it was certainly reasonable to think that impeachment would make things worse instead of better: First, unless they could’ve pulled off the nearly unimaginable “double” of impeaching both the president and the vice president nearly simultaneously, impeaching Bush would’ve left the country in the hands of Darth Cheney, who embodies all of Bush’s evil and more, and is even more ruthless (and unfortunately competent) in pursuing his fell designs. Second, impeachment would’ve consumed all the government’s attention (as it did during the much less weighty Clinton impeachment), bringing all other business to a halt… and yes, even in the face of Bush’s crimes, the people’s other business goes on, and it remains the duty of Congress to manage same. Third, impeachment would almost certainly have created rancor and backlash in the public, damaging Dems’ electoral chances in 2008… which I mention not out of some partisan horse-race desire to win for its own sake, but because I’ve believed all along that the fastest way to end the war and begin undoing the damage was to make sure we elected a Democrat to the White House in 2008.
But finally, it was impossible to imagine impeachment succeeding. You have to remember how little actual power the Dems had in the current (outgoing) Congress, despite their ostensible majority: They had only a moderate majority in the House, which might not have been sufficient even to pass articles of impeachment; in the Senate, the Dem “majority” was only 50-49 (remember that one Dem senator was medically incapacitated), and one of those 50 was Joe LIEberman. Any vote on impeachment (or, for that matter on any measure intended to end the war) would’ve gone 50-49 against the Dems, because LIEberman would’ve voted with the Repubs on those issues. In short, there was no fucking chance to remove Bush from office, no matter what Pelosi did.
Even the most aggressive of prosecutors decline to prosecute cases the know in advance can’t be won. (And it was never Pelosi’s job to be a prosecutor anyway, about which more in a bit.)
No, you’re misunderstanding your copy of the Constitution incorrectly. Although it results from “high crimes and misdemeanors” (which term, many have argued, does not necessarily precisely coincide with violations of criminal law), impeachment has the sole purpose of removing an elected official from office; it does not impose fines, imprisonment, or other punishments, and, despite the trappings of a “trial” in the Senate, is more analogous to dismissal for cause than to prosecution. These are separate functions.
As an analogy, consider a former coworker of mine who was caught defrauding the company of milliions of dollars. He was both fired and criminally prosecuted… and different people were responsible for those separate actions.
In impeachment, the Congress, as representatives of the people (which is to say, the president’s bosses) fires the president for cause; prosecuting a president is left to other authorities (which, BTW, is the reason Nixon needed a pardon).
Your reference to “Busheviks” (presumably meaning Pelosi, et al.) suggests what strikes me as a false dichotomy: That anyone who refuses to hurl themselves into futile combat against a foe must therefore actually support that foe’s actions. I don’t buy it.
And the Speaker of the House is a legislator, not a “sheriff.”
But even if she were, and even if I were to stipulate that she’d failed to prosecute the president aggressively enough, that would at worst make her a bad sheriff, not a war criminal in her own right. We hold ineffective prosecutors responsible for their own poor job performance, not for the crimes of others.
Recall that the original charge I was responding to was that the Dems were as responsible for the war as Bush, if not more so. That claim is specious bat crap, regardless of anyone’s disappointment at the lack of impeachment after the fact.
I wasn’t (as I think you actually know) comparing Clinton’s “crimes” (which I actually believe to have been nonexistent) to Bush’s; I was talking about the process of impeachment, which takes a certain amount of time and requires a certain amount of organizational effort and attention. Clinton’s impeachment may define the irreducible minimums in both, precisely because the charges were so specious; an impeachment involving actual high crimes and misdemeanors and proceeding all the way to removal of the president would surely require far more of the government’s time and attention… leaving far less of same for other business.
Now, perhaps you think considering the actual mechanics of impeachment rather than simply surrendering to my first emotional impulse is pundit-level thinking… but if so, the pundit you have in mind must be closer to Rachel Maddow than Hannity/O’Reilly/Limbaugh. I think I can live with that.
No, I’m telling you there are members of Congress whom I personally know NOT to be “craven political hacks,” and who profoundly oppose both the war and the broader Bush/Cheney agenda — people I trust, both personally and politically — who nevertheless opposed impeachment in 2007.
You’re assuming anyone who disagrees with you on this point is therefore automatically a “craven political hack”; I’m telling you it’s not that simple.
Ah, right. Coopting the time-dishonored right-wing tactic of challenging the patriotism of those who disagree, are we? You’d been civil up to this point, and I’ve enjoyed responding in a thoughtful way, but the only possible response to this lazy, hateful comment is: Bite me, asshole!
SteveM:
Didn’t we have this conversation recently in another thread?
Yeah, right. Tell that to the next guy you call a “pussy”… if, that is, you can say anything at all at that point… and be sure to refer him to the wiktionary for confirmation. ;^)
An idiomatic expression means what the people who use it mean for it to mean… and I’m reasonably sure 99 out of every 100 people who use “pussy” as an insult are thinking of genitalia, not multisyllabic Victorian-sounding scorn. YMMV.
Shorter Bill Dauphin: There’s no point bringing articles of impeachment unless they’re certain to pass. [ After all, the failed impeachment of Clinton didn’t have _any effect at all_ on his administration, did it? ] My Congressfriends told me so.
Clinton’s “crimes” (which I actually believe to have been nonexistent) – Bill Dauphin
Not so: he set the precedent for Iraq with the illegal attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
Obviously, if you spend enough time talking about Bush, you start to talk like him:
Clearly, I’ve misunderestimated the need to proofread. [blush]
PS: I’m intensely pleased to have posted comment #666… and especially happy that the subject of that satanic posting was “pussy.” Jus’ sayin’…
Stephen Wells (@667):
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I would say there’s no point in bringing articles of impeachment when you judge it’s impossible to remove the president from office… because removing the president from office is the only purpose of impeachment.
Your example…
…actually proves my point: The effect of the Clinton impeachment was to comprehensively hose up the functioning of the government for the duration, while producing no worthwhile outcome from any point of view.
Nick Gotts (@668):
I’m sure you understand I was referring to the so-called “crimes” for which Clinton was actually impeached. Kosovo is an entirely different subject.
BTW, I don’t think the Kosovo example really had anything to do with Bush’s “thinking” WRT Iraq. I think Bush wanted to go to war because he believed that going to war is what presidents do to prove they have big brass balls, and I think he chose Iraq as the site of his display of presidential manhood because he perceived it as “unfinished business,” in both nationalistic and personal terms. Honestly, I don’t think he ever gave precedent or justification a single thought.
I meant to add this to my last (@670):
I should clear up that I’ve mentioned my acquaintance (friendship would be stretching a point) with my congressman not out of some desire to puff myself up, but to point out that members of Congress are people. If all you know about Congress comes from news reports and blog arguments, it’s all too easy to reduce them to two-dimensional figures (e.g., “political hacks”). If you actually meet them and talk to them — which is not that difficult to accomplish, at least for members of the House — you can get a subtler, truer read on what motivates them.
You might still conclude, in any given case, that a congressperson is a hack, but at least you’ll have some idea of what you’re talking about.
I don’t think the Kosovo example really had anything to do with Bush’s “thinking” WRT Iraq. I think Bush wanted to go to war because he believed that going to war is what presidents do to prove they have big brass balls, and I think he chose Iraq as the site of his display of presidential manhood because he perceived it as “unfinished business,” in both nationalistic and personal terms. Honestly, I don’t think he ever gave precedent or justification a single thought. – Bill Dauphin
I did realise you were talking about the Lewinsky business. I made the point about Kosovo because when debating Iraq I’ve often been confronted with “Well, what about Kosovo? Ner-ner-ne-ner-nerrr!” (from people who assume no-one could possibly have been against that piece of illegality). So I know from experience that Clinton’s illegal war is used to excuse Bush’s.
I’m sure you’re right that Bush didn’t give precedent or justification a thought. I’m less sure about his neocon henchmen. Moreover Bush had already gone to war, remember, in Afghanistan, where he actually had reasonable justification and a UN mandate, so I don’t think proving his manhood by launching a war could have been his reason for Iraq, although showing he was better than his Dad may have been. However, the invasion of Iraq was planned by the neocons before Bush was even appointed (I disagree with neg that 9/11 made it possible – rather, the need to deal with Afghanistan first probably delayed it).
My point re. Clinton was that impeachment _does_ affect government whether it succeeds or not; that there would have been great benefit to the USA and the world, in forcing the Bush administration to focus on defending against impeachment rather than advancing their horrific policy goals; and frankly I don’t see what wonderful, progressive, constructive things the House and Senate were achieving that an impeachment process would have interrupted.
Also, pronouncements from politicians that they will not pursue impeachment because it’s not politically practical are a circular argument; “It’s not practical because we won’t do it”. I honestly don’t see what dire consequences could have followed from pursuing the impeachment of most of the high officers of this administration, or how they could have been worse than the visible consequences of _not_ impeaching them.
And there is a moral question; if you’ve taken an oath to uphold the constitution, I don’t think you get to say that you had your fingers crossed and a mental reservation to defend where practical and convenient.
Stephen Wells:
…and I agreed with that point, as far as it goes. It’s just that I don’t see much chance that an unsuccessful impeachment effort could have produced a beneficial effect in this case.
The argument I was responding to was that the failure of Pelosi, et al., to bring impeachment to the table in January 2007 makes them responsible for all the war deaths since. For this argument to make sense, you must believe that bringing impeachment proceedings could have stopped the war… and I’ve seen no persuasive case that even a successful impeachment could’ve stopped the war any quicker than electing a new president would. Certainly an unsuccessful impeachment wouldn’t have stopped the war.
The Constitution provides for impeachment; it does not require it.
More broadly, I’m troubled by the emerging trend I’ve seen in the “Grinch” thread and now here to automatically equate political disagreement with disrespect for the Constitution, if not outright treason.
Folks, it’s possible for honest people of good will to disagree about even very momentous things. Treating every strategic or tactical disagreement, even with your ostensible political allies, as immoral, treasonous dereliction of duty to the Constitution is a recipe for chaos.
Nick:
I disagree with your disagreement: No doubt the need to “do” Afghanistan first did delay Iraq, but I really don’t think it would’ve been politically possible to do Iraq without the provocation of 9/11. That’s why they worked so hard to falsely connect Iraq to the attacks.
Of course, given who we’re dealing with, it’s possible they would’ve simply declared martial law, dissolved the Congress, and invaded Iraq anyway… but I’m not sure I believe Bush’s balls are quite that big and brassy in real life.
I really don’t think it would’ve been politically possible to do Iraq without the provocation of 9/11. – Bill Dauphin
Careful Bill – you’ll turn me into a 9/11 “Truther” ;-)
Seriously, for the abundant evidence that the neocons intended to invade Iraq well before 9/11 and were working on the justifications, see:
Events Leading Up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. It was central to the neocon project for permanent global dominance – which, by the way, I fully expect Obama to pursue, although less recklessly, if he can possibly afford it. (If I’m right, all US troops will not leave Iraq unless forced out.)
Nick:
Briefly, and just for the sake of clarity…
Oh, I absolutely agree that they did. I just doubt whether they’d’ve been able to execute that intention without 9/11 (or some similar crisis) to create the necessary FUD.
However, all the culturally-specific alternatives to shoe-throwing are mere gestures.
I thought reasonable people agreed that throwing shoes in this instance was too?
that’s how I saw it, anyway.
I mean, surely there are a myriad number of things one COULD throw at Shrub that actually would cause some damage (including modified shoes).
Not so: he set the precedent for Iraq with the illegal attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
??
I must have missed something.
wasn’t that a NATO approved and participated in attack?
without going into the details in this post, there were other large differences between Clinton’s actions and Bush’s.
Ichthyic@677,
Sorry: I was unclear. They all involved nothing more than putting the gesturer’s hand(s) and/or arm(s) into specific configurations.
wasn’t that a NATO approved and participated in attack? – Ichthyic
Yes, Clinton and the USA alone were not responsible. But except in cases of self-defence, only the UNSC has the right under international law to mandate military action.
I just doubt whether they’d’ve been able to execute that intention without 9/11 (or some similar crisis) to create the necessary FUD. – Bill Dauphin
FUD? Unfamiliar acronym!
However, I get the general idea. Here we’re in the realm of speculation, but I think a causus belli could and would have been manufactured. After all, it was the alleged WMDs rather than the alleged link to 9/11 that were to the fore in RL.
“actually “pussy” is not a reference to women, but is short for “pusillanimous”
And if you actually buy that, I’ve got a tract of misogynstic land to sell you.
The equation doesn’t stop there, hon.
Nick:
It means fear, uncertainty, and doubt… which happen to be the primary tools the Bush regime has used to advance its agenda. Agreed that they would’ve at least tried to manufacture a causus belli, whether they would’ve succeeded or not… but 9/11 meant they didn’t need to try.
nick-
I just want to stress the point that what Bush did was unprecedented for an American administration from my recollection.
you may say groundwork was laid by previous actions of any given administration, but none have done before exactly what Bush did.
Whether THAT sets an even worse “precedent” for future administrations remains to be seen.
Ichthyic:
I agree. In fact (and I know in advance I’ll be derided as an apologist for saying this, but what the heck), the sheer unprecedentedness of Bush’s actions explains some of the Dem votes for the use-of-force authorization, which seem so strange in retrospect: In 2002, my memory is that nobody really understood quite how hell-bent on war Bush actually was, and few anticipated that he might simply ignore all the evidence, and the opinions of our allies, and just invade no matter what.
I know it seems naive in retrospect, but I think most of the Dems (maybe most members from both parties) who voted for the 2002 reolution actually expected Bush to live by its terms (as quoted by negentropyeater earlier in this thread); certainly that’s what Hillary Clinton said at the time in her floor speech: That her vote was not a vote for war, unless all other options had been exhausted.
Of course, we now know that even that limited authorization was gained through a deliberate program of lies to the Congress and the people.
It’s not like the executive branch hasn’t lied to the Congress about wars before, but AFAIK this is the first time a president has whomped up a war entirely from scratch based solely on lies.
The Bush administration does other things besides invade Iraq, most of them horrible. Impeachment might have helped slow them down a bit.
the sheer unprecedentedness of Bush’s actions explains some of the Dem votes for the use-of-force authorization,
several interviews I have seen with prominent democratic legislators tend to support what you said there.
OTOH, as was pointed out a bit earlier… it does suggest that when someone is thoughtless enough to allow themselves to be overwhelmed by such things, they are in danger of seeming more than a bit stupid.
obviously a trait that is not limited to the right side of the aisle.
that said, if we want better performance from our legislators, I sometimes tend to wonder if I can complain overly if I think I could do it better, but refuse to.
such is life in a representative democracy.
I’m going to try a smaller pond and see how that works out.
In 2002, my memory is that nobody really understood quite how hell-bent on war Bush actually was – Bill Dauphin
The evidence was there – see the link I posted earlier, and of course the infamous PNAC document Rebuilding America’s Defences.
Ichthyic,
Consider Vietnam: a war on a far larger scale than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, similarly started on the basis of arrant lies (Gulf of Tonkin incident). Going back considerably further, there’s the Spanish-American War, again started based on lies (about the USS Maine’s sinking); and even the Mexican-American War, which the USA started by invading an area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, claimed as part of Texas on patently spurious grounds. So really, pretty much SOP in a longer historical perspective.
“And while that may apply to the Dems for not standing up to the Rethuglicans, I think it really does apply to all Americans. We truly are now afraid of our own shadows, willing to be strip searched in airports and have our toothpaste confiscated based on some vague threat of being able to make a small smoke bomb. “…Home of the brave…” no longer. The terrorists won, americans are now completely terrorized.”- SteveM #663
Sorry, but our airport security is Still a joke (example: LAX). We don’t take shit seriously at all. If we did, then this War in Iraq would have been over before it began. Or we would have Osama. End of story. Really, all this wandering out in the desert for the past 6 or so years is just embarrassing the hell out of our military, as well as makethe U.S. out to be pigs and villains.
All this discussion of wars, i want to look at antiquity, back in the days of Good old Teddy Roosevelt. Didn’t he essentially start a war for profit in Panama (or militarily backed the coup- which doesn’t sound as straightforrward as it was)? Just askin’.
Bill D @ # 665: Don’t have time to address your comments in detail; my thanks to others who pointed out many of the flaws in yr claims.
The main reason you find it “impossible to imagine” impeachment seems to exist in the limits of yr imagination, since you seem to have some knowledge of how US politics works. Pls consider the precedent of Nixon’s removal: nail the obnoxious & unpopular veep first, let him be replaced by a popular but weak hack, then bring the hammer down. Pelosi & Co had a blueprint created by much more competent minds, they just lack the drive and vision to implement it.
Or is your concept of what’s possible so limited by living up to the GOP stereotype of ineffectual Democrats that you don’t think a groundswell of well-justified antagonism could be mustered against Dick Cheney?
Millions of us around the world knew, and hit the streets to say, that Bush’s intended war on Iraq was going to be unjustified, barbaric, extreme, corrupt, and a massive failure. The hoity-toity political class continues to insist that “nobody” had any hint that the Bushkrieg was not going to be a brilliant Hollywood success.
The selective blindness exhibited by advocates of inertia and appeasement is why so many “leading” Democrats & their clue-free apologists are going to continue to be called out as craven hacks – and why they/you will react with bafflement & indignation.
I gotta get back to work. Pls go read something a little to the left of your comfort zone.
I think the man who threw the shoes is a hero.
Those who think that it’s wrong seem to live in a bubble.
This President condoned torture. The U.S.A. hanged people for water boarding our soldiers in past wars. To quote count nefarious at the top of the blog, “two wrongs don’t make a right”, right Count?
Nick (@688):
Of course the evidence was there; my point was that it’s much easier to see the pattern in that evidence — and more critically, to believe the outcome it points to — in retrospect, after the fact of the invasion, than it was at the time. I consider this (and this also responds to Ichthyic @687) our fool me once moment. The silver lining of this very dark cloud is that it’ll be very difficult for any future president to pull the same shit… at least as long as the current generation is alive and voting.
As for the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and the Gulf of Tonkin, I thought of those and actually did a little
researchGoogling before I posted (that’s what my last paragraph @685 was meant to allude to), but it seems to me that all of those were different in kind from the 2003 invasion, which strikes me as a president and his administration deliberately conspiring to build a case for a war of personal preference. That said, I’m not enough of an historian to decisively support my feelings on this, so if you disagree I’ll let it stand that way.Pierce (@690):
Given the pervasively presumptuous and dismissively ad hominem tone of “voice” you continue to employ, I probably ought to just leave it at bite me, asshole, but… well, “fools rush in,” after all.
I’ll first note that this evolution left us with the “weak hack” as a caretaker president, followed by a similarly weak (albeit brilliant) one-term Democrat and then Ronald Reagan, whose administration laid much of the political groundwork for the mess we’re in today. This is really the pattern you wanted us to repeat?1
But more to the point, this “blueprint” really has very little similarity to the Bush/Cheney case:
* Agnew was never impeached, nor was he threatened with impeachment. Instead, he was criminally charged for garden-variety political corruption (i.e., bribery and such) that stretched back before he became VP, and his resignation was part of a plea bargain on those charges.
* Agnew was nowhere near the political knife-fighter that Darth Cheney is. Unlike Agnew, Cheney would, in my estimation, fight to his last drop of (no doubt coal-black) blood rather than plea-bargain his way into obscurity as Agnew did.
* Like Agnew, Nixon was guilty of concrete bad acts, mostly unrelated to policy or concerns of national security. This contrasts with Bush, who would certainly claim the accusations against him were ideological in nature. I’m not suggesting Bush’s crimes weren’t as bad as Nixon’s — clearly they were worse — but I am suggesting that proving them would’ve been a subtler, more difficult task.
Now, to the practical concerns: Investigations of the Nixon administration began almost immediately after the Watergate break-in, in early summer 1972, and Nixon didn’t leave office ’til late summer 1974… and that was without the impeachment process continuing all the way to its conclusion. But at least the outcome of that was removing Nixon more than 2 years before the natural end of his term. By the earliest time the Dems could’ve conceivably begun the impeachment of Bush/Cheney (January 2007), there was already less time remaining in Bush’s term than it took to get rid of Nixon. It’s highly probable… almost certain, in fact… that Bush could’ve “run out the clock” before any impeachment could’ve been concluded.
BTW, getting rid of Cheney first, even if it could’ve been accomplished, wouldn’t have worked: Bush could then have appointed John McCain VP, leaving the Dems with the dilemma of either effectively conceding the 2008 election by allowing McCain to run as an incumbent president, on the one hand, or leaving Bush in place, on the other hand (which still would’ve made McCain a stronger candidate even so).
The only scenario that would’ve effectively removed the Bush/Cheney administration would’ve been the simultaneous impeachment of both the president and vice-president. This is unprecedented in our history (unlike in parliamentary systems, we have no process for throwing out the whole government at one go), and would’ve certainly been spun as a naked personal power grab by Pelosi, who is irrationally feared as a “San Francisco liberal”, notwithstanding the disappointment actual liberals often express about her.
This is not about a failure of my imagination, nor about the insufficient leftiness of my “comfort zone.” I yearn to see Bush brought to justice and his policies repudiated. My immediate reaction to Pelosi’s disavowal of impeachment was deep disappointment… but then I actually thought about it, and realized that my overriding concern was that we, as a nation, stop fucking up the world and start unfucking it as quickly and effectively as possible. I judged then, and I still believe, that those goals — and the best interests of the world at large — were better served by an overwhelming Democratic electoral victory in 2008 than by a bitter and politically risky impeachment fight.
I dearly hope some avenue is found in the future to bring the Bush administration to justice. In the meantime, I’m content that we’ve begun the process of national atonement and repair, and proud of my (admittedly nanoscale) role in helping bring that about.
1Yes, I know there was a great deal of other stuff going on that also partially accounts for the sequence of presidents. Even so….
Bill D @ # 692: Again, I’m rushed, so this note will be choppy and miss a few points. Deal.
Yes, the situation is not exactly the same as 35 years ago: after all, Agnew was taller than Cheney, had more hair, and was Greek. Nonetheless, Cheney was & is the more vulnerable of the Dastardly Duo. Had Pelosi and her fellow wimps really intended to do something good for the country, that’s where they could have started.
Oh, but going after B&C would have been “a subtler, more difficult task”. That makes everything that happened in the last two years okay, then.
… Bush could’ve “run out the clock” before any impeachment could’ve been concluded.
If it takes more than half of a president’s term to impeach, then impeachment has been effectively removed from the Constitution, without an amendment or even discussion. And all because the Democrats lack the will, cohesion, and desire (though certainly not the evidence) to protect the country and steamroller a pack of lying pettifoggers. Thanks, Nancy & Harry! Please notify the Illinois legislature that they can go back to funding sewer systems, since Blagojevich has a lawyer.
… Bush could then have appointed John McCain VP…
Recall that the VP nominee must be approved by the Senate, which is not (recent history to the contrary) obligated to support anyone nominated by a venal and incompetent president.
I’m content…
Damn, you’re easily satisfied. Be very very grateful that I’m not actually in a mood for ad hominem commentary at present.
… that we’ve begun the process of national atonement and repair…
In your dreams. We’ve put a bandaid on a festering wound, but the gangrene remains active in the body politic.
Pierce (@693):
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that you and I simply have irreconcilable differences on this, so this will be my last reply to you.
Nope. Darth is more unpopular than W (as shocking as it is that such a thing is possible), but impeachment isn’t a popularity contest. Assuming you want them impeached for war crimes (there are conceivably other grounds, but your comments about Pelosi and the Dems being responsible for post-2007 war deaths suggests this is what you have in mind), it’s the president, not the VP, who is Commander in Chief, and thus primarily responsible for illegal use of military force. I’m not suggesting Cheney bears no responsibility, but Bush’s responsibility is clearer and more explicit… making him the more vulnerable of the two to impeachment.
You seem to be making the false assumption that my disagreement with you about what consitutes effective solutions means I don’t think there are any problems. Of course it’s not “okay” that we’ve continued to be mired in an illegal and immoral occupation… but I’m reasonably certain that an impeachment attempt could not have changed that, and the failure of such an attempt might well have cost us the opportunity to do other things — like electing Barack Obama and sending a large Democratic majority to the Congress — that remain our best hope to actually end the war and begin healing.
How difficult the task of impeaching Bush/Cheney would’ve been doesn’t bear on the moral justification of doing so, of course, but it does bear on the question of whether impeachment was the best way to address the underlying problem: A “solution” that can’t be implemented is no solution at all, regardless of how just it is.
Going for impeachment would’ve been quixotic in the strictest sense: Tilting at that windmill might’ve made us feel like Glorious Defenders of Truth and Justice, but it wouldn’t have gotten a damn thing done.
Yeah, due process sucks, doesn’t it? Surely we ought to be able to do something simple like tossing the whole government out on its ass quicker than, for instance, sending O.J. Simpson to jail for waving guns around.
Seriously… however convenient it might have been in this case, making impeachment of the president quick and easy would be a Very Bad Thing™ in the long run.
BTW, since you insist that impeachment is law enforcement and not political, why aren’t you mad at the Repubs for not beginning impeachment back in 2004, when it might’ve done some good? Surely law enforcement knows no party lines, right?
Under your proposed scenario, that venal and incompetent president would be the only one available to make the appointment. Do you really think the Repubs in the Senate would proceed with impeaching Bush (even stipulating that they would do so at all) before confirming a leading Repub presidential candidate as VP? Just hand the interim presidency to Pelosi? I think I need to chat with you about this bridge I have to sell….
It’s pretty obvious from context that I was not saying I was broadly satisfied with the state of the world when I used that word… but then, responding to your correspondents’ actual positions isn’t your strong suit, is it?
Apparently you are determined to curse the things we haven’t managed to do. I, by contrast, prefer to celebrate the good things we have accomplished. I don’t expect to convince you, but I’m pretty sure my approach is more productive. That said, it’s probably a good thing to have both sorts of voices in the conversation
Peace.
the 2003 invasion, which strikes me as a president and his administration deliberately conspiring to build a case for a war of personal preference. – Bill Dauphin
I think this may be the core of our disagreement – which I don’t expect to resolve, only to clarify. I think that from the point of view of extending the power of the US elite, the invasion of Iraq made strategic sense, to gain control of oil supplies, and military bases in south-west Asia. The neocons’ ideology quite consistently places this goal (justified in terms of American exceptionalism and Leo Strauss’ version of conservatism) above everything else; so I disagree that this was a war of personal preference, any more than the intervention in Vietnam, or the earlier wars mentioned, or the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917-18 – all of which were ideologically motivated. The neocons’ great strategic error was due to over-eagerness: they neglected the principle that if at all possible an expanding power should fight one enemy at a time (as Hitler did when he attacked the USSR before defeating Britain, and for similar reasons – Afghanistan was not the war they wanted to fight, just as war with Britain was not the war Hitler wanted to fight); and they believed their own propaganda about being welcomed with open arms (just as Hitler believed his own propaganda that the USSR would swiftly collapse).
Nick:
I’m not sure I agree that we have a disagreement so substantial that its core requires clarification! ;^)
I think you’re describing the motivations of Darth Cheney and his neocon cronies pretty accurately, and I also stand by my own description of Bush’s own (very different, IMHO) motivations… which is to say, it’s more that we’re coming at this from different angles than that we deeply disagree.
That, and the fact that I seem to have constitutional tendency to see things just slightly more hopefully than you, account for our apparent disagreement, I think. But at the end of the day, while you and I may not be “on the same page,” I grok that we’re in the same chapter.
BTW, today is my last day at work for the year: Tomorrow I’m having some very minor surgery, and then I’ll have an extended break, including a number of houseguests. The point being, I may not be much in evidence here for the next couple weeks, and I wanted to wish you and everyone else a wonderful Christma-Hanu-Rama-Ka-Dona-Kwanzaa.
Bill,
Hope the surgery goes without a hitch – and compliments of the season – as those stridently atheist English Victorians used to say!
Bill –
Good luck with your surgery. I still recommend you try to see what the world looks like from beyond your happy little hole in the ground.
Nick Gotts @ # 695: It wasn’t just Hitler’s propaganda. Reportedly, British and US military analysts all told their respective bosses that, once the Panzers rolled eastward in June ’41, the Germans would own everything west of the Urals before the leaves turned.