Shoe Karma

Righties -- like Howie -- still maintain, beyond all reason, that our disastrous foray into "nation building" in Iraq was the right thing to do.

Not surprisingly, Iraqis don't necessarily agree with Howie and his ilk.

On the heels (sorry) of yesterday's shoe-throwing incident, Iraqis -- and Arabs throughout the middle east -- have come out in support of Muntader al-Zaidi, the 29-year-old journalist with a major-league throwing arm who came this close to beaning soon-to-be-former President George W. Bush at a press conference in Baghdad.

From the New York Times:

In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes.

A daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly awarded the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi, a 29-year-old journalist, a medal of courage.

In the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, people calling for an immediate American withdrawal removed their footwear and placed the shoes and sandals at the end of long poles, waving them high in the air. And in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, people threw their shoes at a passing American convoy.

In street-corner conversations, on television and in Internet chat rooms, the subject of shoes was inescapable throughout much of the Middle East on Monday, as was the defiant act that inspired the interest: a huge and spontaneous eruption of anger at
President Bush on Sunday in his final visit here.

Shoe Karma. Not exactly greeting the liberators with showers of candy and flowers, is it? Did anybody really believe that would happen?

As the Buddha said, "What goes around, comes around."