Guardian: The Chinese Premier forgives his shoe thrower. Will Bush be as gracious?

[deminks]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/shoe-thrower-cambridge-iraq-bush?commentpage=1

Heartwarming news about the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. He has urged Cambridge University to forgive the German pathology student Martin Jahnke for hurling an athletic trainer at him and calling him a dictator while he was giving a speech last week.

No one seems to have been pleased with poor Jahnke. The audience shouted "shame", some of his fellow students wanted him dismissed, the university has apologised, Jahnke has apologised and gone into hiding - and his trainer missed Wen by about a yard. Perhaps he should have stuck to his important research into debilitating diseases.

(snip)

So someone might have to remind the ex-pres about al-Zaidi, and mention Premier Wen's magnanimous gesture, and give him a little prod in the right direction. Of course, it's much harder for George. His shoe was worse than Wen's. It was the first insulting shoe, payback for Bush's calamitous legacy in Iraq, for tens of thousands of dead Iraqis. The shoe-thrower is now a hero, promised free shoes for the rest of his life. Then Jahnke threw his; then a 35-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman threw a shoe and a book at the Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, who was lecturing at the University of Stockholm; meanwhile, the web is stuffed with throw-shoes-at-Bush games. In the face of all this, will Dubya be able to show similar humanity?

[yourout]

1. If Bush had his way the shoe thrower would have died in Gitmo in about 30 years...

[tom_paine]

2. If Bushler had had his way, the man AND his family would be executed.

His family, as a message to anyone else thinking of getting cutesy.

And maybe six randomly selected hostages gunned down in the soe-thrower's home village, to make sure the folks back home get the message.

Hyperbole, you say? Maybe. But Bushler has the history and the family ethos in him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml