Bush, Iraq, Obama, Afghanistan, and journalistic shoes

Here is a good summary of recent events:

Someone has finally treated George W. Bush with the respect he deserves.

The treatment: two shoes thrown at his head. The someone: a certain Muntadar al-Zaidi, opinionated journalist of refined aim, if rather unsophisticated expression. "This is a farewell kiss! … Dog, dog!" he bellowed at Bush as he hurled the symbolic footwear, one after another.

"Throwing a shoe at someone," reports the Washington Post in a story I hope will trigger a 30-day stampede of American shoe-throwing, "is considered the worst possible insult in Iraq and is meant to show extreme disrespect and contempt."

I can't imagine a more fitting dénouement for Bush, for Iraqis, for us. But just as one miserable chapter of American interventionism inches -- maybe -- toward a close, another is ominously in the making.

Read the rest of P. M. Carpenter's piece here.