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Twelve years ago today on December 14, 2008, Iraqi journalist @muntazer_zaidi threw both of his shoes at outgoing US President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad as he yelled “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!”
Muntazer al-Zaidi was subsequently abducted, jailed and tortured by the US-backed and trained Iraqi security forces.
After he was released in September 2009, @muntazer_zaidi published an article entitled “Why I Threw The Shoe.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/why-i-threw-shoe-bush
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/why-i-threw-shoe-bush
“I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims?”
“Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.”
“When I threw the shoe, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora."
As we honor Muntazer al-Zaidi’s heroism, we are also reminded that in the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, President-Elect Joe Biden was the top Democrat in Congress to back the genocidal war.
