Midway through a news conference in a palace in Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi stood up, unprompted, and hurled one of his shoes, then the other, at President George W. Bush. (Bush successfully ducked.)
- Other Iraqi journalists grappled with him, then Iraqi security hauled him off in a melee — we could hear his cries of pain, muffled from behind a door, throughout part of the news conference. We found spatters of his blood on the carpet after the Q&A.
- Reporters on the U.S. side, me included, hunched in our chairs — it’s never good to be between Secret Service agents and a threat to the president. Some of us tried to dictate the news over the phone. We tried to keep our eyes on Bush. Our job.
The shoe-throwing was a remarkable show of hatred and disrespect. Much of the Muslim world sees shoes (especially the soles) as unclean. “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” Zaidi shouted in Arabic.
He has no regrets. “This scene stands as proof that one day a simple person was capable of saying no to that arrogant person with all his power, tyranny, arms, media, money and authority, and to say that ‘you (Bush) were wrong,’” he told Reuters in a piece out Tuesday.
“You feel bitterness as you see people's pain 24 hours a day,” said Zaidi, who became something of a cult figure after the incident.
GOP’s 2024 platform: No regime change
His reflections came with the world coming up on the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq for the purposes of ousting dictator Saddam Hussein. It’s March 19 if your benchmark is Bush’s address to the nation, or March 20 if you’re by airstrikes on Baghdad in local time.
The war, waged on the false charge Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (or WMDs, which groups nuclear, chemical and biological arms), cost countless Iraqi civilian lives and trillions of American dollars, while more than 4,500 U.S. military personnel paid the ultimate price, and more than 30,000 were wounded.
- At home, one of the conflict’s effects has been to douse enthusiasm for using force to bring about “regime change” in foreign countries, a euphemism that means “toppling their leadership with our military.”
The GOP’s current mind-our-business mind-set contrasts pretty sharply with where the Republican Party was 20 years ago. Just to jog your memory: Some conservatives were loudly calling for toppling Iran’s government even after Iraq’s WMDs proved to be a mirage.
In the context of a questionnaire about America’s Ukraine policy, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson asked prominent potential candidates for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination whether America should seek “regime change” in Russia.
Choosing Russia stacks the deck a bit. Changing regime behavior? Sure. That’s the goal of the U.S.-led sanctions against Russia. But regime change? It’s going to be hard to find someone to run on a campaign platform of trying to use military force to overthrow a leader who possesses enough of a nuclear arsenal to turn America into a radioactive ash heap.
Separating from the past
Still, 20 years after the cheerleading for the “shock and awe” airstrike campaign with which the Pentagon began the war, the unanimity against “regime change” is notable. Not one of the potential candidates Carlson asked came out in favor of making that policy toward Moscow.
And laced through the answers are very obvious snipes at what used to be the GOP foreign policy establishment.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for instance, said “[a] policy of 'regime change’ in Russia (no doubt popular among the DC foreign policy interventionists).” It’s not, in fact, popular, but the point is that he tied regime change generally to traditional hawks.
(It’s a little curious that Vivek Ramaswamy omits any mention of Iraq even as he rails against intelligence officials with a “track record of being blatantly wrong about ‘intelligence’ assessments” and cites Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan as examples of U.S.-driven regime change gone awry.)
You can talk the talk, but can you vote the vote
This week will test how far the GOP has come: The Senate is expected to hold its first votes on repealing Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs) against Iraq that date back to 1991 and 2002. The latter effectively was a vote to allow Bush to go to war in 2003 to topple Saddam. But while that dictator was executed in 2006, both Barack Obama and Trump cited the 2002 AUMF to justify military operations in Iraq.
The Senate Foreign Relations recently voted 13-8 to scrap both measures. The full Senate could hold a procedural vote on Thursday and a final ballot early next week. Then it’s on to the House.
And then perhaps to President Biden.
Politics-but-not
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What’s happening now
Texas judge holds key hearing in abortion pill lawsuit
“A federal judge on Wednesday will consider an unprecedented effort to undo long-standing government approval of the abortion medication used in most pregnancy terminations nationwide,” Perry Stein, Caroline Kitchener and Ann E. Marimow report.
- “U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is expected to question lawyers in the case that seeks to restrict access to mifepristone, the medication first approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago.”
Stocks tumble as Credit Suisse woes add to banking sector jitters
“New fears for the stability of the global financial system rattled financial markets on Wednesday, after Credit Suisse acknowledged it found ‘material weakness’ in its financial reporting, adding uncertainty to the already jittery banking sector in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse,” Jeanne Whalen and Rachel Lerman report.
Meta starts cutting 10,000 workers in second round of layoffs
“Meta is poised on Wednesday to begin handing out the first of 10,000 pink slips it plans to give employees over the next few months, marking continued turmoil at the social media giant as it battles business woes,” Naomi Nix reports.
Power plants must cut pollution that crosses state lines, under new EPA standards
“The Biden administration announced tougher limits Wednesday on smog-forming pollutants from power plants and other industrial facilities, a move that officials said would reduce air pollution in downwind communities and help Americans suffering from asthma and other respiratory problems,” Anna Phillips reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
The 72-hour scramble to save the United States from a banking crisis
“A frenetic, roughly 72-hour race soon unfolded in Washington to confront the threat of a full-blown financial meltdown. A bank was failing. Billions of dollars — in workers’ paychecks, and tech companies’ balance sheets — were about to be lost. And the government faced fears of an economy in free fall, rekindling nightmares of the Great Recession in 2008,” Jeff Stein, Tony Romm and Gerrit De Vynck report.
- “This account is based on interviews with 20 people familiar with the decision-making process, including top White House officials, leading congressional lawmakers and tech industry executives. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations that carried market-moving stakes.”
A Republican ‘civil war’ on Ukraine erupts as Reagan’s example fades
“When Ronald Reagan addressed a brand new organization of upstart conservatives nearly five decades ago, he cast U.S. entanglements abroad as part of the nation’s destiny to take on ‘leadership of the free world’ and to serve as a shining ‘city on the hill’ that inspired other countries, sparking thunderous applause,” Liz Goodwin, Isaac Arnsdorf and Marianna Sotomayor report.
“At a dinner named after the former president at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering earlier this month, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake pushed a very different message to the party’s activists.”
… and beyond
TikTok considers splitting from ByteDance if deal with U.S. fails
“A divestiture, which could result in a sale or initial public offering, is considered a last resort, to be pursued only if the company’s existing proposal with national security officials doesn’t get approved, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be named discussing non-public information. Even then, the Chinese government would have to agree to such a transaction, the people said,” Bloomberg News’s Alex Barinka and Olivia Carville report.
House Republicans say DeSantis had no friends in Congress. Now, many want him to run for president.
“In interviews with more than a dozen House Republicans, not one said they thought DeSantis, 44, was someone who would have been at the center of the presidential conversation back when they served with him on Capitol Hill from 2013 to 2018,” NBC News’s Scott Wong reports.
- “Still, nearly all of the House Republicans interviewed for this article praised DeSantis for how he has led Florida, from quickly reopening the state after Covid restrictions to fighting the liberal ‘woke’ agenda in schools and businesses and highlighting border security issues by flying migrants to liberal Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Many are encouraging him to run for president in 2024.”
He helps Trump navigate legal peril while under scrutiny himself
“Boris Epshteyn has had his phone seized by federal agents investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his election loss. Lacking any track record as a political strategist, he has made more than $1.1 million in the past two years for providing advice to the campaigns of Republican candidates, many of whom believed he could be a conduit to Mr. Trump,” the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Jesse McKinley report.
The Biden agenda
Biden, decrying gun violence near massacre site, signs executive order
“President Biden on Tuesday visited [Monterey Park, Calif. ], which is still in mourning from the mass killing of 11 people earlier this year, to announce an executive order increasing the number of background checks for gun sales, though he acknowledged the action falls short of what action by Congress could achieve,” Matt Viser reports.
Biden undoes Trump-era land deal in Alaska’s Izembek refuge, a Jimmy Carter priority
“The Biden administration said Tuesday that it is withdrawing a land-swap deal that would have allowed a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, a vast wild area in Alaska originally protected under President Jimmy Carter,” Maxine Joselow and Timothy Puko report.
- “The move helps preserve the sweeping environmental legacy of Carter, who entered home hospice care last month at 98 and has made the issue a top priority in his final days. But it stops short of the complete rejection of a road sought by some environmentalists and Carter himself.”
Biden says he intends to visit Northern Ireland
“President Joe Biden said Monday he intends to visit Northern Ireland to mark the upcoming anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which the US helped broker a quarter-century ago to bring an end to decades of sectarian violence,” CNN’s Kevin Liptak reports.
How big SVB was, visualized
“The recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the shutdown of Signature Bank of New York has sparked fears of a wider financial meltdown. Both are ranked among the top 30 U.S. banks by assets, but they are far smaller than the country’s biggest financial institutions, which measure their assets in the trillions,” Luis Melgar and Hamza Shaban report.
Hot on the left
Bank failures revive bitter Senate Democratic infighting
“Five years to the day after Senate Democrats clashed bitterly over Donald Trump-backed bank deregulation, the failure of two banks is reigniting the old tension,” Politico’s Burgess Everett and Eleanor Mueller report.
“President Joe Biden on Monday criticized the former president’s loosening of bank regulations, when Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress approved a measure to roll back parts of the 2010 post-financial crisis reform bill known as Dodd-Frank. Biden didn’t mention that his own party played a significant role, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is well aware.”
Hot on the right
On the trail, freewheeling Donald Trump counters scripted Ron DeSantis
“Trump is leaning into his freewheeling style in no small measure, according to advisers, to draw a contrast with his potential chief rival for the Republican nomination: Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor’s unofficial pre-campaign book tour has consisted of more scripted and stage-managed events, often where the row of cameras that Trump so loves are excluded and the rituals of more intimate politics are limited,” Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Maeve Reston report.
Today in Washington
At 2:30 p.m., Biden will discuss lowering prescription drug costs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Biden will depart Las Vegas at 3:30 p.m. to return to the White House.
In closing
In the room where it happened ????
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.