Molly Ivins: Eye to Eye in Iraq

I think we need to stop President Bush from looking people in the eye. On Tuesday, he told the new prime minister of Iraq that he had come to Iraq to “look you in the eye.”

Do we even know if the cultural significance of “looking someone in the eye” is known or accepted in the Middle East? Even if Middle Easterners are kindly disposed toward looking one another in the eye—say it’s not considered rude or worse—would they know what to make of Bush’s declaration to U.S. troops that he had come to look “Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes and determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are.”

Who knows if Iraqis think this is determinable by the deep-eye look. Come to think of it, I’m not sure it is.

People interpret things differently. Not long ago, I was in the beautiful home of an exceptionally rich person, even by Texas standards. And I saw what I took to be a lovely sort of “treatment” on the spiral staircase—a swathe of cloth draped artistically about the twisting spiral. Commentator/author Bud Trillin was with me, and he thought the painters had been there and just left a drop cloth on the stair rail, which is the reason you can’t take Bud anywhere. Maybe it’s like that in the Middle East with the deep-eye look—people just can’t tell.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060614_molly_ivins_iraq/