Muntadhar al-Zaidi Sentenced to 3 Years in Jail for Throwing Shoe at President Bush

By now Muntadhar al-Zaidi is a household name–well, an Iraqi household name anyway.  Americans aren’t very advanced about pronouncing hard things like ‘Muntadhar’, ‘nuclear’ or ‘grape’.  Regardless, al-Zaidi became a household name when, in a fit of nominal determinism (al-Zaidi translates to:  dumb-dumb who throws shoes at foreign leaders), he chucked his loafers at George W. Bush (America’s ex) during a press conference in Baghdad on December, 14, 2008.  The sober lifestyle has done wonders for Bush’s reflexes because he quickly ducked out of the paths of the flying shoes and escaped injury.

al-Zaidi, who has been detained ever since the incident, was today sentenced to three years imprisonment, the minimum for attacking a foreign leader,  after claiming in his testimony that what he did was a natural reaction to the US occupation of Iraq. Outraged supporters say the verdict was unjust.   His defense attorney claimed al-Zaidi should be set free as his act was “an expression of freedom and does not constitute a crime.”  I realize that democracy is a new concept in Iraq, and the whole ‘freedom of expression’ thing is fun to play with, but is that supposed to be some kind of joke?  The man threw not one, but two projectiles at the US president!  Could someone please explain to me why it is that I’m not allowed to wear shoes in an American airport with a bunch of regular, unimportant people but a reporter in Baghdad can throw his at the leader of the free world and come out whining about his sentence being too harsh?  I mean, seriously, Munthadar al-Zaidi should be kissing the pee-soaked cement floor of his jail cell every morning because he doesn’t have 372 bullet holes in his rotting corpse!  I’m surprised that president Bush, an avid Texan, didn’t pull out some kind of unnecessarily large handgun and start picking people off in his own defense.

It’s not that I don’t understand what if feels like to look at the bobbling, offensive head of George W. Bush and want to throw shoes, flaming bags of poo, or embryonic stem cells.  Believe me, no one despises the man more than those of us who had our country hijacked twice by his mindless horde of, what I like to call, anti-progress zombies.  The thing is, if you throw anything at the US president and the most you get is three years in prison and the undying loyalty and respect of your countrymen, you should probably conisider yourself very, very lucky.