December 15, 2008 ... The buck stops someplace else, Habibi.

On his farewell trip to Iraq as US President, President George W. Bush found himself dodging the ultimate regional insult--leaving aside kidnap and beheading--of having size 10 shoes hurled at him by an angry journalist, intent upon venting his personal anger and the anger of others at the President who was instrumental in liberating Iraq from the tyranny of a vicious, tribal dictator and his cohort, and into the incapable hands of blood-feuding Iraqis. For, like their Palestinian counterparts and their regional and international sympathisers, the buck always stops elsewhere.

Another example of the hypocrisy which is rife in the region, and is coincidentally linked to Iraq, is the situation which Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh now find themselves embroiled. As part of a subcontract with Kellog-Brown-Root (KBR), Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslims who paid up to $3,000.0 a head to Muslim middlemen-cum-people smugglers, are now stranded in Baghdad, without passports which were taken off them for administration purposes, without wages, and are frequently set upon by Iraqi security if they try to protest about their grievances. In the meantime, they live in the dirt within the confines of a warehouse complex, under armed guard, and shelter under makeshift dwellings made out of cardboard cartons, scraps of timber and plastic bags and/or sheeting held down by bricks and rocks. Who is to blame: The great Satan, of course.

At the present time, arrangements have been made to evacuate these poor wretches to Dubai, but there is no guarantee that they will be paid for services rendered, or be given tickets to be able to fly home. Appeals to a Christian charity will probably resolve this problem. Ironic when one considers that between 2,500-10,000 Christian Iraqis have had to be evacuated to the EU because of a pogrom against them in Iraq, a similar class of pogrom still ongoing against Christians in Pakistan. Talk about turning the other cheek.

Ruthless exploitation of Muslims by Muslims, such as this, is not unusual for the region. From Somalia to Saudi Arabia to Yemen to Abu Dhabi, a myriad of examples can easily be discovered and demonstrated.

So, when the journalist who assaulted President George W. Bush took off his shoes, he should have rushed to the front of the room and proceeded to beat himself about the head with them, as a sign of repentance.

As for President George W. Bush and his coalition allies, he and they must wonder why they bothered.