L. Aravind writing under the title, ‘Bush, boots and bogus bravado in Baghdad’, in The Island of 26 Dec. says, (on Iraqi TV journalist’s shoe throwing at US President George Bush), to condone such an uncivilised and crude attack on a visiting Head of State, is to open the door to worldwide anarchy and vandalism where no visiting VVIP will be safe’.

A managing director of a Glasgow based computer company that had immortalised the shoe throwing event in an online video game named ‘Bush Boot Camp’, is reported to have remarked that, ‘we’re hoping the agents (Secret Service) will use this game as a training aid for future footwear attacks on world leaders’. (The Telegraph Group London 2008 quoted in The Island World View of 17 Dec.). So, future presidents need not entertain undue anxiety with regard to their safety against missile attacks of footwear as feared by the writer.

Besides, President Bush is a world leader similar to no other, deserving unique treatment for his ‘war on terror’ that claimed the lives of millions of innocent Iraqi civilians, women and children which he termed as ‘building respect for democracy’.

It had been reported that the pair of shoes used in the incident would fetch a price of more than ten million US dollars and the Turkish shoe firm claimed to have manufactured the offending footwear had received orders totalling 370,000 pairs of the identical model since named ‘Bush Shoe’, within a week. Such is the magnitude of popular feedback received for this spectacular ‘farewell kiss’.

It seems that the Bush family and Iraqi shoes share a historical legacy. When US invaded Kuwait during the presidency of Senior George Bush, the entrance to Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad had been paved with floor tiles bearing the picture of the US President so that the people could trample it with their shoes, while walking, to protest against US aggression on the neighbouring country.

American writer, Robert Scheer, author of a new book, ‘The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and weekend America; says,

The shoe throwing Iraqi journalist is now a venerated celebrity throughout the middle east, and his words to the president, ‘this is the farewell kiss, you dog’, will stand as the enduring epitaph in the region, on Bush’s folly, which is the reality, of his claimed legacy of success in the ‘war on terror’. That, and the devastating follow-up as he threw his second shoe, ‘This is from the widows, orphans and those who were killed in Iraq’, a reminder that, we have used much deadlier force than a shoe in the shock-and-awe invasion once celebrated in American media as a means of building respect for democracy.’

‘That an Iraqi journalist, whose family had been victimized by Saddam Hussein, came to so loathe the American president, as does much of the world, should serve as a final grade on the Bush administration’ (Truthdig’ quoted in Daily News of 22 Dec.).

As an aftermath to the above incident, President Bush had reportedly quipped, ‘I didn’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole’. In view of the fact that Bush has to relinquish his post on Jan. 20, it is time that he looked into his own soul, too, in retrospect of his past record and torture policy symbolized in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

The writer also had mentioned Soviet leader Nikita Krushev’s removal of shoes in the UN to protest against western dominance in the world body, which he says, ‘was condemned world wide, that continued into post Gorbachov Russia’. It is common knowledge that, ‘condemnations’ were manipulated by the western media to pave the way for Mikhail Gorbachov to betray the Great October-Revolution of the Russian people, falling prey to US President Ronald Reagan’s conspiracy that promised economic resurgence under capitalism, but, in fact, plunged Russia into worst economic turmoil, ethnic strife and bloodshed, leading to the disintegration of a once great super power - the USSR. Thus, US deceptive hegemony had prevailed even in the past.