What Would Kidnappers Do Without Experts?

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

What Would Kidnappers Do Without Experts?
“Houston Anti-Kidnapping Expert Kidnapped in Mexico”–headline, Associated Press, Dec. 15

Lame Duck, Duck!
In the twilight of his presidency, George W. Bush gave Iraqis a final opportunity to thank him for liberating their country. But as Agence France-Presse reports, one Iraqi “journalist,” Muntazer al-Zaidi, seems to have preferred the old regime:

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.

Zaidi seems to have borrowed the idea from some hippie in Oregon, who in February 2005, as the Associated Press reported at the time, tossed a shoe at Richard Perle, a former assistant defense secretary. Perle was debating Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a proponent of the Iraqi status quo ante, at Portland’s Pacific University. The unidentified footwear-flinging freak shouted “Liar! Liar!” at Perle.

As for Zaidi’s heel-hurling, AFP reports it was “hailed by many in the Arab world as an ideal parting gift to the unpopular US president,” and it actually quotes Arabs praising this silly action:

“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. . . .

“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.

If these comments are representative, they tell you something about the intellectual impoverishment of Arab culture (and of the culture of American higher education, habitat of both Asad Abu Khalil and, one presumes, the Portland Perle projectile perpetrator). Zaidi is a hero in the view of these men for his childish, impotent and potentially (though not actually) harmful expression of unreasoning rage.

Meanwhile, AFP reports that “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.” Of course Dulaimi did not end up doing all that well by his last high-profile client, who as far as we know is still dead. If Zaidi is smart, he’ll hold out for a white-shoe firm.

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