MY NEW HERO: MUNTADAR AL-ZAIDI
This entry was posted on 12/15/2008 9:54 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
"I don't know what his beef is."
President George W. Bush, in an ABC News interview with Martha Radditz
I really can't imagine what it must be like to go through life so innocent, so untouched and unsullied by one's own mistakes and decisions and the devastating consequences that have resulted from those mistakes and decisions. It would be like walking down the street, pressing numbers on a cellphone, while behind you, explosives blast streets and buildings each time you press a number, and yet you continue walking with nary a flinch or blink of an eye, while in your wake, people wail and weep.
Then, one of those people calls you a "dog" and hurls a shoe at your head--which, in his culture, is the worst, most disrespectful insult one can give--and you tell reporters that you figure he's just looking to get attention and that you don't know "what his beef is."
After all, you were just pressing numbers.
But while Martha Radditz was asking poor little Bush what he thought and how he felt about this terrible thing, NBC's Brian Williams was asking Richard Engel what he knew about the man who threw the shoe.
Now, through the years, I have come to know the war correspondents by name, both the print journalists and the TV people. And I've come to know the ones whom I can trust, the ones who put their lives on the line not just with the troops, but with the civilians who have been effected by war. The New York Times had Dexter Filkins, for one. The Washington Post had Sudarsan Raghavan. CBS News had Lara Logan. And NBC had Richard Engels.
Richard Engels was the only news guy on the ground in Iraq BEFORE the war began who stayed there all the way until last year. In the early days of the war, he was in great personal danger, and as the war dragged on, continued to put himself in harm's way many many times in order to report the truth. (He is now doing the same thing in Afghanistan, and has filed riveting reports while ducking bullets with Marines on the mountainous Pakistan border.) He speaks fluent Arabic and is highly respected in the area.
And it was Richard Engels who explained that the al-Baghdadia correspondent, Muntadar al-Zaidi, had not only had numerous family members killed in the war and kidnapped in the unrest that followed the invasion, but that he, himself, had been kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year, held for three days, and tortured.
He comes from the volitile area famous for followers of Muktada al-Sadr, where there is indeed great hostility toward not just Bush, but Americans in general.
Understand that I'm not saying I'm a big supporter of the kinds of people who have killed American troops. Insurgents tried to kill my son, nephews, and their buddies and team members many times, so believe me, I am no Jane Fonda.
I also realize that, for better or worse, George W. Bush IS the commander-in-chief of our troops and that, as such, they are duty-bound to offer him respect and to obey the orders he hands down through the chain of command. They will do the same for Barack Obama even if they privately supported and voted for John McCain.
But this whole incident is instructive because it is a perfect illustration of the total obliviousness of Bush toward the forces he has unleashed.
The very reason that the conditions deteriorated on the ground as badly as they did is that Bush and his lieutenants--Cheney and Rumsfeld--deliberately sent in too few troops to secure the country following the invasion, then stood back when chaos erupted, saying merely, "Stuff happens."
THEN, they completely threw out the country's government, replaced it with young, inexperienced political hacks who could be reliably trusted to oppose abortion and vote for Bush, and paid no attention when massive civil war erupted.
In my memory, I have never, ever, in my entire life, seen a commander-in-chief who cares LESS for the troops in his care. The debacle at Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg. National Guard troops who never dreamed they'd be doing anything more than rescuing hurricane victims have been shoved into war ill-trained, unprepared, and underfunded, and underequipped. Their casualty rates have been the highest of all the branches, as well as their levels of post traumatic stress.
Stop-loss--the back-door draft--that has forced men and women to remain past retirements and past their contracted active-duty status has been a TRAVESTY.
And active-duty troops, sent back and back and back again, then yanked out and sent to Afghanistan again and again and again--this is abuse, pure and simple.
ABUSE.
This president and his chickenhawk cohorts have taken their own military for granted, forced them into situations before they were fully equipped and trained, and then posed in front of them for campaign photo ops. THEN attacked anyone who dared oppose their tactics by accusing them of hating the troops.
Oh, the irony.
These young people, these nameless faceless "troops," they stepped up when nobody else would--less than ONE-HALF OF ONE PERCENT of our nation's population. They stepped up, they volunteered, they were and are proud to wear their country's uniform, and they have performed splendidly.
But Bush doesn't care. Oh, he gets all weepy when he's around grieving mothers or cheering troops, but truthfully, if he really did care, if he REALLY DID CARE, he would not have insulted them the way he has with this dismal endless miserable constant war that has eroded morale, destroyed marriages, and sent rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, and other signs of severe stress skyrocketing.
And that does not even TOUCH what has happened to the country of Iraq and its people during six years of war. It took this administration FOUR YEARS and AN ELECTION to wake up and realize how badly they had screwed up. Thousands of military dead and horrifically wounded and a nation torn apart and bleeding.
I can tell you right now that if the Democrats had not taken over congress in 2006, Donald Rumsfeld would STILL be the secretary of defense.
Muntadar al-Zaidi is one of hundreds of thousands of victims of Bush's war.
So when that Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the head of George W. Bush and screamed, "This is your good-bye kiss, dog, dog!"--my only regret was that I could not
have done it myself.
