Orangepekoe

When historians tell this chapter of US history, shoes will have played an interesting role in the Age of Terror. We started with Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, followed by years and years of smelling feet in airport terminals. And now, to end our tale of woe is the shoeing of the President.

The shoe story continued into Monday late morning with the brother of the shoeing journalist telling the world more about the man who winged a shoe at W. The shoeing journalist is believed to have planned this insult, although his brother said that the shoes were thrown out of pend up rage and anger over the US occupation of Iraq.

It’s interesting, how we in the US don’t think of the war in terms of occupation. We still think of war in terms of World War II soldiers trapsing through Europe and being welcomed in small towns where they were being defended by US soldiers against the Nazis. The shoe incident is a reminder that being a resident in occupied territory sucks and you are so disempowered that all you can do is throw your shoes, for if you flipped the bird or fired a gun, you might die, but if you throw your shoes, well, that’s sending a message.

The message has made this shoeing journalist a bit of a hero. It’s also waking the Iraqis to a new reality, that their nightmare might be over. I hope the Iraqis won’t hate all of us. In some way, we’ve all be living in occupied territory. Someone has been occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and it’s left us all a bit less. The sad thing is, I suspect the fury from these years of occupation will come winging towards us all in the coming years. And it won’t be in the form of shoes. How do we prepare for the collective apology that needs to reconcile this situation? Sometimes I think the entire event lessens democracy. If democracy is forced on a people, how can that still be the political ideal?