DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Knutey on December 15, 2008, 01:41:33 PM
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Arab world hails shoe attack as Bush's farewell gift
Dec 15 08:17 AM US/Eastern
Iraq faced mounting calls on Monday to release the journalist who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush, an action branded shameful by the government but hailed by many in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president.
Colleagues of Muntazer al-Zaidi, who works for independent Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, said he "detested America" and had been plotting such an attack for months against the man who ordered the invasion of his country.
"Throwing the shoes at Bush was the best goodbye kiss ever... it expresses how Iraqis and other Arabs hate Bush," wrote Musa Barhoumeh, editor of Jordan's independent Al-Gahd Arabic newspaper.
Hundreds of Iraqis joined anti-US demonstrations to protest at Bush's farewell visit on Sunday to Iraq, which was plunged into a deadly insurgency and near civil war in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.
The Iraqi government however branded Zaidi's actions as "shameful" and demanded an apology from his Cairo-based employer, which in turn was calling for his immediate release from custody.
Zaidi jumped up as Bush was holding a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday, shouted "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" and threw two shoes at the US leader.
The shoes missed after Bush ducked and Zaidi was immediately wrestled to the ground by security guards and frogmarched from the room.
It is not known where Zaidi is currently being held.
"Al-Baghdadia television demands that the Iraqi authorities immediately release their stringer Muntazer al-Zaidi, in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people," it said in a statement.
"Any measures against Muntazer will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime."
Saddam Hussein's former lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said he was forming a team to defend Zaidi and that around 200 lawyers, including Americans, had offered their services for free.
"It was the least thing for an Iraqi to do to Bush, the tyrant criminal who has killed two million people in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Dulaimi.
His colleagues in the Baghdad office of Al-Baghdadia said Zaidi had long been planning to throw shoes at Bush if ever he got the chance.
"Muntazer detested America. He detested the US soldiers, he detested Bush," said one on condition of anonymity.
Soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture. After Saddam's statue was toppled in Baghdad in April 2003, many onlookers beat the statue's face with their soles.
During a demonstration in Sadr City, the bastion of radical anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, protestors threw shoes at passing US military vehicles, while in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, the crowds chanted "Down with America."
"All US soldiers who have used their shoes to humiliate Iraqis should be brought to justice, along with their US superiors, including Bush," said Ali Qeisi, head of a Jordan-based Iraqi rights group, calling for Zaidi's release.
"The flying shoe speaks more for Arab public opinion than all the despots/puppets that Bush meets with during his travels in the Middle East," said Asad Abu Khalil, a popular Lebanese-American blogger and professor at Stanislaus University in California at angryarab.blogspot.com
An Iraqi lawyer said Zaidi risked a miminum of two years in prison if he is prosecuted for insulting a visiting head of state, but could face a 15-year term if he is charged with attempted murder.
In Cairo, Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the television channel, described Zaidi as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man," saying he had worked at Al-Baghdadia for three years.
"We fear for his safety," he told AFP, adding that Zaidi had been arrested twice before by the Americans and that there were fears that more of the station's 200 correspondents in Iraqi would be arrested.
"As far as I'm concerned, as he long as he hit him using a shoe it's perfect," said Cairo shoeshiner Ahmed Ali.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081215121703.9anjkcex&show_article=1 (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081215121703.9anjkcex&show_article=1)
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Perhaps we should start a campaign to MAIL shoes to Juniorbush and Cheney as a reward for their fine service to idiotic foreign policy.
We could write random Arabic letters on them just to give the translators something to do in their spare time.
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Sounds like a great idea.
Will keep the flea market vendors profitable and keep postal workers busy.
Then there will be the increase in sharpie sales which can only help spur the economy.
It will also keep old shoes out of landfills, so this movement will be good for the environment.
And lastly it will help keep the cost of food down as flour and corn is not diverted to the cream pie market.
Brilliant!
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Ever see the movie the Matrix?
Good ole W looked like Neo dodging bullets!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgbOcSqfGJk[/youtube]
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"Throwing the shoes at Bush was the best goodbye kiss ever... it expresses how Iraqis and other Arabs hate Bush," wrote Musa Barhoumeh, editor of Jordan's independent Al-Gahd Arabic newspaper.
Hmmm... I don't think much of this particular newspaper. ***
But she's right in part - the shoe throwing is wildly popular here. General opinion seems to be right in line with this statement.
***This could be a prejudice I have, in part, because I am the Accounting Manager for their law firm and have been trying to collect their past due $30,000 in legal fees for months on end to absolutely no avail. This does nothing for my "affection" for them.
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The shoe thrower is probably a hero to the entire Arab world for expressing their true feelings which their sold-out puppet governments are unable to do. As such, I would think he is virtually untouchable. The Iraqi government punishes him at their own peril.
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I doubt he's a hero to all of Iraq, and as for the entire Arab world ... well, that's a long shot considering Iraqis aren't Arabs.
Like it or not, Americans are very popular in Iraq right now. One guy blew his top. He's lost family because of the war so it's understandable. The reality however, is that he's alive right now because America is in charge.
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Iraqis are much more courageous now than they were Fifteen years ago.
Or did someone throw a shoe at Saddam Hussein and I didn't hear of it?
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<<I doubt he's a hero to all of Iraq, and as for the entire Arab world ... well, that's a long shot considering Iraqis aren't Arabs.>>
Iranians aren't Arabs. Most Iraqis are Arabs, but the Iraqi Christians are not - - they're mostly Assyrians or Chaldeans. The Iraqi Kurds aren't Arabs either. Most of the rest, except maybe the Yazidis, a very small minority, are very much Arabs.
When the Sunni refer to Shi'ites of the South as "Persians," they don't mean that literally - - they're not ethnic Persians, they just follow the same religion as the Persians do.
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Thank you for proving me correct.
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<<Iraqis are much more courageous now than they were Fifteen years ago.
<<Or did someone throw a shoe at Saddam Hussein and I didn't hear of it?>>
What you apparently didn't hear of was the armed revolution against the Saddam Hussein regime in southern Iraq, and the Kurdish revolt against the same regime in northern Iraq and the Iraqi rebellion against British rule in the 1930s and the popular revolution of 1958 which brought a final end to the British-installed Hashemite monarchy.
I don't know who appointed you a judge of the Iraqis' courage, but IMHO it would compare very favourably with the courage of the US aggressors. After all, how much guts does it take to rape and murder a 14-year-old girl and her family when you have all the guns and they have none? How much guts to shove light tubes up a prisoner's ass when it's five or six guards and one helpless prisoner? Americans can fool one another with asinine comments like yours only because of their widespread ignorance. In the rest of the world, that bullshit doesn't pass muster.
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<<Thank you for proving me correct.>>
Come again? And just how did I do that?
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LOL@US aggressors.
What do you expect from a communist? A communist who defends Salin's purges. You feel the same way about Saddam's purges Mike? Those okay with you? The Baathists were very much like you communists. You'd feel right at home in Saddam's Iraq.
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<<LOL@US aggressors.>>
The victims don't have that privilege. They're all dead.
<<What do you expect from a communist? A communist who defends Salin's purges. >>
With all due respect, you don't know jack-shit about Stalin's purges. They saved the Revolution from its internal and external enemies. Sorry that mistakes were made, they should have let only perfect human beings make the decisions.
<<You feel the same way about Saddam's purges Mike? Those okay with you?>>
No, I opposed them for years while I was in AI. But it was hard to get any traction, the U.S. government was pro-Saddam back in the Eighties and they had absolutely no interest in any kind of human rights campaign for Iraq.
<<The Baathists were very much like you communists. >>
Saddam took them way off course. But you're right, there WERE similarities. The same way the Bush administration had similarities to the Nazis. Having similarities doesn't mean there weren't bigger differences.
<<You'd feel right at home in Saddam's Iraq.>>
NOBODY felt "right at home" in Saddam's Iraq. That was the whole point of the security apparatus. You wouldn't have been any more or less at home than anybody else in the country.
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>>Saddam took them way off course. But you're right, there WERE similarities. The same way the Bush administration had similarities to the Nazis. Having similarities doesn't mean there weren't bigger differences.<<
Well at least you admitted the similarities between you and Saddam before you went off on the wacko train again.
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<<Well at least you admitted the similarities between you and Saddam . . . >>
We were both Stalinists once. Saddam much more so than I. Kinda like saying that Strom Thurmond and Hubert Humphrey were both Democrats once.
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Except they didn't kill people by the millions now did they.
::)
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<<Except they didn't kill people by the millions now did they.>>
Hubert sure as hell did. Two million dead in Viet Nam, and he was an integral part of the Johnson administration that started that war, and he defended it as long as he held office.
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>>Hubert sure as hell did.<<
Hubert Humphrey killed millions of Americans? I was a kid in the 60's and 70's and I don't recall starving to death or being rounded up and sent to Vermont to freeze to death in a work camp.
You're a real waste of time Mike. At some point, some point soon I hope, you'll be able to put aside your twisted hatred of America. As all of us have admitted hundreds of times, America has made mistakes. However, America is the greatest force for good in this world. It is because of America ... democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and atheist too that billions of people are free today.
I've been through this before, so I won't go on listing all the good America has done. Most people know. You're rants against America are just stupid. Stupid.
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Vietnam was also a big mistake, and Humphrey supported it.
I don;t think I would blame him for killing millions of people, but he could have done a lot more to end it, and didn't.
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Vietnam was much more than a "mistake." As Jane Fonda pointed out at the time, it was a crime. A crime for which none of the major perpetrators was ever held accountable and punished.
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Vietnam was much more than a "mistake." As Jane Fonda pointed out at the time, it was a crime. A crime for which none of the major perpetrators was ever held accountable and punished.
What was the alternative ?
To resist Communism as it spread was the basic decision and I really beleive it was wise to do so.
Smaller tactical decisions were frequently flubed but the basic idea of giveing Communism a hard time was not a mistake at all.
In Viet Nam a more agressive war might have won for us , or it might have caused us to fight WWIII as the Chineese and Russians might have more openly fought us .
Giveing up sooner or fighting somewhat less might have saved a lot of suffering for us , but the outcome in VietNam would have been sadly the same , just sooner.
Kennedy had the option of allowing an election to proceed as planned , but with more than half the votes being garunteed by force to be for the Communists Kennedy didn't think that a fair election would be possible , so giveing Vietnam over with no resistance was a better choice?
I hardly think so .
The Communism that was at the time spreading with an evangilistic zeal and a crusadeing violence needed to be resisted , and I am glad it was resisted.
The tactics chosen were often so bad that it seemed as if the administration was trying to avoid a victory , I wish that weren't so , but that is a diffrent question.
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<<What was the alternative ?>>
The alternative, obviously, was to allow the Vietnamese people, who had been fighting the French, then the Japs and then the French again, to determine their own destiny. Pure and simple.
<<Kennedy had the option of allowing an election to proceed as planned , but with more than half the votes being garunteed by force to be for the Communists Kennedy didn't think that a fair election would be possible . . . >>
That is a completely false version of what actually happened. The alternative was to hold the free elections that were scheduled to be held in the South and which Eisenhower (not Kennedy) refused to allow to proceed. Ike was at least honest in his reasons: in a free election, 80% would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, a national hero.
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<<What was the alternative ?>>
The alternative, obviously, was to allow the Vietnamese people, who had been fighting the French, then the Japs and then the French again, to determine their own destiny. Pure and simple.
<<Kennedy had the option of allowing an election to proceed as planned , but with more than half the votes being garunteed by force to be for the Communists Kennedy didn't think that a fair election would be possible . . . >>
That is a completely false version of what actually happened. The alternative was to hold the free elections that were scheduled to be held in the South and which Eisenhower (not Kennedy) refused to allow to proceed. Ike was at least honest in his reasons: in a free election, 80% would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, a national hero.
Kennedy did not like the Election idea either.
If 80% had voted for Ho Chi Minh there would have been a 20% casualty rate , pretty much what happened anyway.
The idea was not to prevent the Vietnameese from determineing thjeir own destiny , but to prevent the imperial Communists from takeing them over and determineing their destiny for them.
Spring had already failed in Prague , there was no expectation that the Communists were going to respect the rights of a people to determine their own destiny. Or especially not of persons either.
So no there was no alternative availible that would have left the Vietnameese alone , they were going to have us or the Communists , we gave them a chance anyway.
By the way if Ho Chi Minh were really heroic , then he was also not very smart to throw in with Communists.
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<<If 80% had voted for Ho Chi Minh there would have been a 20% casualty rate , pretty much what happened anyway.>>
Yeah right, plane. Based on what evidence? That 20% of North Vietnam's population was lost when Ho Chi Minh took over there? And it's NOT what happened anyway.
<<The idea was not to prevent the Vietnameese from determineing thjeir own destiny , but to prevent the imperial Communists from takeing them over and determineing their destiny for them.>>
Yeah. In a free election. The idea was to PREVENT a free election in the South precisely on the grounds that Ho Chi Minh was a national hero and as Ike said, 80% of the vote would have gone his way. If that's not preventing a people from determining their own destiny, I need to look for a second language to express myself in.
<<Spring had already failed in Prague , there was no expectation that the Communists were going to respect the rights of a people to determine their own destiny. Or especially not of persons either.>>
I see. The Prague Spring failed during the Eisenhower administration, when the decision was taken to abort the scheduled elections and support an "independent" Republic of South Viet Nam under the benevolent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic Diem brothers. Interesting theory of history there, plane.
<<So no there was no alternative availible that would have left the Vietnameese alone , they were going to have us or the Communists , we gave them a chance anyway.>>
No, they were NOT going to have "us or the communists," I don't know how much plainer I can make this than Ike already did, they were going to have THE COMMUNISTS and by a margin of 4 to 1.
<<By the way if Ho Chi Minh were really heroic , then he was also not very smart to throw in with Communists.>>
Oh, thanks for the heads-up, plane. So Uncle Ho was Not Very Smart. I'll try to keep that in mind. Have you communicated your findings to any historical associations? I'm sure they'd find that also very interesting. FYI, he didn't "throw in" with the communists, he was one of the FOUNDERS of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
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<<If 80% had voted for Ho Chi Minh there would have been a 20% casualty rate , pretty much what happened anyway.>>
Yeah right, plane. Based on what evidence? That 20% of North Vietnam's population was lost when Ho Chi Minh took over there? And it's NOT what happened anyway.
<<The idea was not to prevent the Vietnameese from determineing thjeir own destiny , but to prevent the imperial Communists from takeing them over and determineing their destiny for them.>>
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Actually, the war killed a lot more people than any Communist regime would have done.
At the end of WWII John Foster Dulles met with a group of people who had been conquered by the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh offered to shake his hand, Dulles refused even to shake Ho's hand. The US actually delivered US made new uniforms for the Japanese occupation police in Vietnam to wear until the French could send enough to restaff the colony in Indochina. The idea of allowing the Vietnamese to police their own country apparently never occurred to them.
The US never controlled Vietnam, needed none of its resources, and Vietnam posed no threat whatever to the US. Had there been elections, it is probable that the capital would have been moved back to Saigon and the South Vietnamese would have been increasingly more in control. Ho was Saigonese, by the way.
The US pissed away billions of dollars, ended up with a huge number of wounded, and last about 60,000 military people iin Vietnam, and the world, all of it, would have been a far better place had they just let the elections stipulated by the treaty taken place. Everyone who died or was wounded there was just wasted by an assortment of idiotic administration policies from Truman through Ford.
Though there were individual acts of bravery, camaraderie, love and friendship involved in the war, nothing positive for America resulted from this mess. Everyone would have been much better off without it.