Iraq's Farewell Kiss

President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad to boast about his legacy and to sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). However, Bush's surprise was a 28-year-old journalist, Muntader al Zaidi, who hurled his shoes at Bush, shouting that this was a "farewell kiss" to the "dog" from "the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq." These mother-of-all-insults are designed to portray Bush as not only less-than-human but also as lower and filthier than the dirt under one's shoes.

As Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski points out in his outstanding 2008 book The Transparent Cabal---The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel, the neocons' motive in taking us to war was to create instability in Iraq to benefit Israel. Israeli and neocon strategists have long promoted the destabilization and fragmentation of Israel's many enemies.

For example, Sniegowski cites the important work of Israeli Oded Yinon entitled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," published in the World Zionist Organization's Kivunim February 1982, which advocated the dissolution of Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula, along ethnic/religious lines. The goal was to create numerous small powerless statelets so that Israel could reign supreme.

The blatant lack of planning by the neocons for post-war Iraq is thus explained by the fact that the neocons wanted instability. This would be an excuse for a prolonged or permanent occupation by US forces, which in turn would serve as a base from which to wage war on Israel's other enemies, such as Iran.

Ironically, the SOFA which Bush came to sign stipulates not only that our forces leave on a scheduled timeline, but also that we not use Iraq as a base from which to attack Iraq's neighbors, such as Iran. Moreover, Bush's legacy of horrible suffering inflicted on the Iraq people returned to him in the form of two shoes.