A day doesn’t go by without stirring up reactions and commentaries of the shoe-throwing at George Bush by Iraqi journalist, Moutadar Zaidi. For this act, which earned him almost unanimous sympathy, Zaidi is liable for a stiff prison sentence. The Iraqi court charged with judging him compares his act to the quasi-crime of lese majesty (“violating majesty”). It is true that ridicule, as also the Iraqi journalist’s shoes, did not kill anyone in this affair.
This begs the question: Is Mountadar Zaidi’s dignity, and through him that of the Iraqis’, worth less than that of George Bush, the president of the USA? Zaidi was, in a sense, expressing a legitimate protest against a foreigner who dared to assume the right to occupy Iraq, and so causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
It is not possible to exonerate the American president of what is both the gravest aggression, and more condemnable than the “crime” committed by the Iraqi journalist.
Zaidi’s shoes have certainly caused less damage than the International Coalition soldiers’ boots that have trampled on Iraq without raising the slightest emotion in those who are struggling to present George Bush as a victim.
Who will judge American soldiers for having profaned Iraq while trampling on it with their feet?
Mountadar Zaidi could have felt that George Bush’s presence in Baghdad was an unbearable provocation.
Show me the American journalist who would have accepted the military occupation of the USA and the arrival of the conqueror to New York and Washington…
Mountadar Zaidi lost neither his self-control nor his restraint; he behaved as a patriotic Iraqi and, it is important to underscore, as a Man.
His quickly scheduled appearance before an Iraqi court will make history, not for judging him, but for the Court of history. The judges’ verdict for Mountadar Zaidi will not affect international public opinion, which considers this a mock-trial.
Mountadar Zaidi is already at the height of a symbolic victory for having ridiculed the most powerful man on this planet, by showing him his true colors: an American president without stature or substance, who left the scene in a complete farce, who didn’t even get those who laughed on his side.
George Bush, who is used to have his underlings wax his shoes, literally and figuratively, did not expect an Iraqi to throw his own shoes at his face in Baghdad.
And it is without question that his name will remain associated with this less than pleasing picture.
Mountadar Zaidi will, however, go down in history for other reasons.
For that it is sufficient to know where to stand.
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