Free Muntazer al-Zaidi!
There's a move taking place in America figuring a way to blame President Obama for economic problems we face today. Take the comment below, posted on the New York Daily News website, from Mozzkid.
Mozzkid Mar 10, 2009 10:21:31 AM Report Offensive Post
What is wrong with this man? He has besmirched President Bush since he got in to office. Last week he says that he is under a lot of pressure and has so much to do - well didn't George Bush have those same pressures? I wonder why Obama finds it necessary to act like the child that always has to blame somebody else? All Presidents have BIG PRESSURE - that is the job they decided to apply for. Using the implied mistakes of a former President to try to cover how you are muddling through is reprehensible. Watch the stock market and you will see that every time Obama has one of his Socialist ideas we all lose money. I'm all for his stem cell veto reversal - maybe I just am hoping for a longer life - LOL. Going gray? He'll be positively white when this is over!
There is nothing particularly unusual about the comment itself. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. All opinions are like a-holes and all the other cliche noise we can chuck into the field; however, one thing should be kept in mind: The economic problems we face today are the result of Republican policies.
Are they the result of Republican policies from the last eight years? I don't know and I don't really care. Democrats in America are to blame as well because this kind of thing has happened before. A Republican (i.e. Reagan or W) runs up a huge deficit while preaching conservative economic policies. The country starts to worry about how to pay off the mounting deficit created by a Republican. A Democrat gets elected into office (i.e. Clinton or Obama.) They work on fixing the budget while Republicans start blaming them for the problems they were hired to fix.
The process/problem doesn't stop with the politicians, because the American people act like history is some lame topic they had to endure in high school (like say algebra) so when talking points begin taking on the semblence of history it's simply because the same statements have been repeated without question.
Let's be very clear this time around.
Barack Obama took over the office of the President of the United States of America January 21st 2009. The economy was admitted to be in shambles as early as October 2008. I wrote about W. Bush imploding the capitalist facade of Republicans in America on this blog back in October (and earlier.)
Obama had nothing to do with that; therefore, it's easily extrapolated (if you require important terminology) President Obama didn't cause the economic problems we're currently facing!!! Those economic problems, the world is in the midst of, started several years ago. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but when plain facts are stated incorrectly it's the right and responsibility of members of a democracy to challenge falsehoods publicly.
Another issue President Barack Obama inherited is spreading democracy in Iraq. That mission (established by W. Bush) doesn't appear to be going too well either. Muntazer al-Zaidi (this is the third way I've seen his name spelled) the reporter who chucked his shoes at President George W. Bush last December has finally been sentenced.
It's been over three months since this guy has been in jail and now he finds he will be doing three years in prison. The folks at the guardian.co.uk have a nice profile written about him with some nice quotes. The Guardian reports: "He had only thrown his shoes after listening to Bush praise the 'achievements' made in Iraq."
Muntazer al-Zaidi described the situation to a Baghdad criminal court:
"While [Bush] was talking I was looking at all his achievements in my mind. More than a million killed, the destruction and humiliation of mosques, violations against Iraqi women, attacking Iraqis every day and every hour. A whole people are saddened because of his policy, and he was talking with a smile on his face – and he was joking with the prime minister and saying he was going to have dinner with him after the press conference. Believe me, I didn't see anything around me except Bush. I was blind to anything else. I felt the blood of the innocent people bleeding from beneath his feet and he was smiling in that way. And then he was going to have a dinner, after he destroyed one million martyrs, after he destroyed the country. So I reacted to this feeling by throwing my shoes. I couldn't stop the reaction inside me. It was spontaneous."
Amen brother!
This guy may spend three years in prison for his response to that moment. It's what societies do, repress people's reactions. Society tempers people's response. al-Zaidi is going to appeal his court decision though. That's got to be new in Iraq.
Do you suppose there were many appeals in Iraq under Saddam Hussein?
That's some type of progress Iraq, but I don't know that it's necessarily democratic progress. It's more like a progressively growing clusterf*ck. It's bureaucracy established in the justice system. Eventually, or maybe always, a bias is built into these bureaucracies.
Three years in prison for expressing oneself in dramatic, peaceful (and arguably democratic) ways.
After all this time, in the Western World, we still haven't agreed on one spelling for this guy's name but nonetheless: Free Muntazer al-Zaidi!
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