Cracked Window

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in Baghdad was hailed as a hero today across the Middle East. In Baghdad, where the incident happened, protesters filled the streets and demanded his release from custody.

When I first watched the video, I marveled at Bush’s sharp reflexes and calm under fire. I even felt a passing wave of resentment that someone would publicly disrespect our president, though I’ve long considered him worse than contemptible. It took me longer than it should have to appreciate the rage that the shoe-thrower must have felt to risk jail for his actions.

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One of my favorite web sites is proof once again that simple ideas can produce breathtaking results. The Big Picture, a seven-month-old photo-journalistic blog of the Boston Globe, demonstrates how so-called old media can do a much better job via new media. Too bad that truth has taken so long to sink in. (I worked on the print side of newspapers for many years before moving to the online side in the heady, pioneering days of the 1990s.)

Two recent features, each with more than two dozen stunning photographs, are stark reminders that the United States is waging two wars in distant lands. The pictures make real what for most of us are distant abstractions in Iraq and Afghanistan. These collections of well-composed single images pack more wallop than any video. They create a lingering truth, a truth not easily blinked away.

Slipping from top of mind amid economic and election anxiety is the tragedy we call Iraq. But a soldier, a tiny plastic one in an unlikely place, reminded me today why Barack Obama appears on the verge of winning won the presidency.

Only Obama among Democratic contenders voted against the war. Without that opposition, he would have never won his party’s nomination. It was among the reasons I first felt the tug of his candidacy — long before he was an official candidate.

The unassuming soldier, a reminder of what we as a nation have wrought, brought the war back to me. How did it come to rest on a cafe’s outdoor table? Not just on a table but within the blood-red walls of a venue symbolic of smoke, fire, and death?

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Each morning I obsessively pore over information about visits to Cracked Window. Not that the number is large, though this offbeat post about a bear campaigning for Barack Obama attracted more than ten thousand because The Atlantic magazine’s Andrew Sullivan linked to it.

I’m curious about what gets read how often — which posts resonate and which don’t. What’s also intriguing are keyword searches that lead to my posts and the countries that blog visitors live in.

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Many people want simple answers to complex situations. They don’t care that the truth is a many layered thing, defying reduction to slogans and sound bites. What’s happening in Iraq is a crucial example.

With that prelude, I recommend two commentaries on the U.S. troop surge, an issue that John McCain muddles and twists for political gain. If only he would read the commentaries. They’re online here and here, but the man who could be president doesn’t know how to use a computer.