Irony alert: Heroic shoe-thrower applies for asylum to Switzerland

posted at 2:00 pm on January 19, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Hey, I thought that the media had anointed Muntazer al-Zaidi the representative of the Iraqis in terms of their feelings towards George Bush and the American liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein.  After Zaidi tossed his shoes at the outgoing American president, the mainstream media made him into a hero and used the shoe-tossing assault as an ongoing motif in cartooning and in Bush retrospectives.  In Iraq, though, Zaidi has discovered that it constitutes assault on a foreign dignitary — and they’re enthusiastic about prosecuting him for it (via Michelle):

AN Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W Bush in Baghdad last month is to seek political asylum in Switzerland, a Geneva lawyer told the daily La Tribune de Geneve today.

Muntazer al-Zaidi gained instant international fame when he threw his shoes at Bush during the US president’s farewell visit to Iraq on December 14, an action considered a grave insult in the Arab world.

“At the beginning of the month his family contacted me via the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) and I shall write this week to the federal department (ministry) of foreign affairs to encourage Switzerland to grant him political asylum,” lawyer Mauro Poggia told the paper.

Why does he need asylum?  The biggest problem, outside of the potential 15-year sentence, is that Zaidi can’t get work as a journalist since his attack on Bush.  Imagine that!  Why would an unprovoked assault on a foreign leader suddenly mean that a journalist can’t be trusted to report on events?

For more irony, consider the options asylum would bring Zaidi:

Once settled in Geneva, the bachelor without children could “very well work as a journalist at the United Nations” which has its European headquarters here, Poggia said.

Of course he could!  Why, shoe-throwers are what make the UN the credible multinational organization it is.  I can’t think of a more appropriate correspondent for the UN’s Geneva base.  Someone brings up Oil for Food?  Throw a shoe.  Anyone talking about how UN peacekeepers routinely sexually exploit women and children in exchange for aid?  Throw a shoe.  Hugo Chavez talks about smelling sulphur after following Bush to the dais?  Hand Chavez a shoe for him to throw.

Zaidi committed an assault on a foreign dignitary for his own political purposes.  He’s not being persecuted, he’s being prosecuted for a crime that not only got captured on video, it got seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world.  Now Zaidi wants to take the cowardly way out of the consequences of his actions.  What a hero!

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