If you were under the impression that the indignation unleashed against President Bush by the recent shoe-throwing incident was confined to the Arab world, this editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada is sure to correct that misapprehension. One wonders what the public debate will be like in our own country when the Bush Administration loses its already diminishing capacity to ‘get its message out.’
“On a furtive visit to Baghdad, during a press conference in the fortified Green Zone, U.S. President George W. Bush collected a small symbolic sampling of the disgust that his person provokes among the Arab people …”
Then, relating what has brought about this upwelling of indignation, the editorial goes on:
“The most disastrous outcome of the ‘war on terror,’ which included the invasion, destruction and occupation of Iraq, was without doubt the moral one: in the name of ‘freedom,’ ‘security’ and ‘democracy,’ Washington killed thousands of innocent civilians, set up centers of torture and extermination and organized an international network of clandestine rendition and murder – and by these actions, setting in motion a historic regression within its own territory and the world at large. Under the pretext of preventing further attacks like those of September 11, 2001, civilians and soldiers of the United States perpetrated grave and numerous crimes against humanity, most of which continue unpunished. Moreover, it is justified to presume that political and criminal responsibility for these transgressions rests with Bush himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior and former officials of the outgoing administration.”
EDITORIAL
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
December 15, 2008
Mexico – La Jornada – Original Article (Spanish)
On a furtive visit to Baghdad yesterday during a press conference in the fortified Green Zone, U.S. President George W. Bush collected a small symbolic sampling of the disgust that his person provokes among the Arab people, in the form of the shoes, insults and recriminations directed at him by a journalist from the occupied country. It might seem that with this incident and with the Orwellian lie of naming the catastrophe in Iraq “one of the greatest successes in U.S. military history,” Bush declared an end to the bloody adventure launched – also on the basis of lies – in 2003. For Iraq and the United States, however, this tragic story is far from over. Barack Obama, who will assume the presidency of our neighboring country next month, will have to confront the details of a difficult and complex military withdrawal and find adequate terms to allow U.S. society to assimilate this “great success,” which is, in fact, a historic defeat for the greatest world power.
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