The name: Muntadhar al-Zeidi -- a new hero to many in the Muslim world.
President Bush -- in a surprise, end-of-term visit to Iraq -- held a
press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Zeidi,
an Iraqi "reporter," shouted, "This is your farewell kiss, you dog,"
and threw a shoe at Bush. The reporter quickly threw a second. The
shoes missed their target only because an agile President Bush managed
to duck. And with his typical self-deprecating humor, he later joked,
"It was a size 10."
"(Al-Zeidi's) a rather nervous type," al-Zeidi's brother later said,
"and above all hates violence and the bombing." Al-Zeidi's employer,
Iraqi-owned but Egypt-based Al-Baghdadia television, refused to
apologize for its reporter's behavior, calling him a "proud Arab and an
open-minded man."
The violence-hating al-Zeidi, according to reports, displays a picture
of the "revolutionary" Che Guevara on his wall. Cuban emigre Humberto
Fontova, author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara," credits Guevara
with 14,000 executions. Witnesses say this icon for many radicals
personally murdered hundreds -- including children and pregnant women.
But we digress.
Many Iraqi reporters in the room apologized to the President. One journalist observed, "It was a reporter (emphasis added) who yanked (al-Zeidi) to the ground before Iraqi or American guards could reach him."
Meanwhile, stateside, many in the Bush-hating news media seemed almost
giddy -- no doubt considering the shoe throwing a vindication of their
own hostility to the war.
Chris Cuomo of ABC's "Good Morning America" said: "Remember when the
statue of Saddam Hussein was brought down? When it happened, all the
people there started throwing shoes at it. Why? Disrespect. It is a
high form of insult."
A CBS "Early Show" reporter said: "Mr. Bush's message of progress was
eclipsed in Baghdad by a sign of his unpopularity. The symbolism
wouldn't have been lost on Iraqis, for whom shoes can be used to show
extreme contempt, as with the footwear beaten against the statue of
Saddam Hussein toppled by Marines five years ago."
The Los Angeles Times wrote: "In the few seconds it took Iraqi
journalist (Muntadhar al-Zeidi) to wing a pair of shoes at President
Bush, the Middle East got its own version of Joe the Plumber. Just as
Joe Wurzelbacher's gripes to Barack Obama catapulted him to fame,
(al-Zeidi's) burst of rage toward Bush has made him a household name
across the Middle East."
"Joe the Plumber"?
Would that be the working-class citizen who politely questioned
then-candidate Barack Obama about his spread-the-wealth philosophy? Or
was the reference to the lost video of Joe the Plumber hurling a couple
of pipe wrenches at Obama's head while calling the now-President-elect
a "dog"?
Let us pose a few questions.
Suppose one or both shoes hit their mark. What if President Bush had
been struck in the eye and been seriously injured? After all, in the
chaos, press secretary Dana Perino was injured when a microphone struck
her in the eye. Would some in the media have considered it as comical
had the reporter targeted Barack Obama? It is, after all, quite
reasonable that the incoming President will be the subject of a greater
than usual number of threats.
This raises another question -- how did the Secret Service allow the
man to get off not one, but two attacks? "I realized one of the
reporters behind me was shouting and, in a way, reloading, with a
second shoe," wrote Adam Ashton of California's Modesto Bee, the only
American reporter in the room. "Off it went, just as fast as the first. I couldn't believe he had time to get a second one off (emphasis added)."
Suppose the Iraqi reporter had thrown his shoes at Saddam Hussein.
During the dictator's 24-year reign, Saddam killed an estimated 300,000
Iraqi citizens. Some place the number at more than a million. This
means that, on the low end, over the past six years, a still-in-power
Saddam would have killed 75,000 people. Since the March 2003 coalition
invasion of Iraq, the Iraq Body Count -- which many consider reliable
-- puts the number of violent Iraqi civilian deaths at between 89,000
and 98,000, a number that includes "insurgents" and civilians killed by
them. But Iraq now has a fledgling multi-sectarian democratic
government, a better economy -- and a free press.
"All over central Iraq," wrote the BBC mere months after Saddam
Hussein's fall, "independent radio and television stations are suddenly
emerging to fill the void left by the destruction and collapse of the
old national broadcaster. Iraqis are enthusiastically embracing the
possibilities of a free media after years of heavy censorship.
Alongside these do-it-yourself radio and TV stations, dozens of
newspapers representing every kind of political viewpoint are suddenly
available."
What of the fate of the shoe thrower in today's Iraq? Eyewitness and
NBC news producer Ghazi Balkiz put it this way: "(Under Saddam) any
insult to the president or the president's guests used to be punished
by death." So while al-Zeidi remains in custody, he faces no feet-first
visit to the wood chipper.
