The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at George Bush, the former US president, has himself come under a shoe attack in the French capital at the hands of a fellow Iraqi.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a television reporter, was in Paris on Tueday at a news conference to promote his campaign for the “victims of the US occupation in Iraq” when the attacker turned the tables on him, shouting: “Here’s another shoe for you.”

Al-Zeidi, who ducked and the shoe hit the wall behind him, said: “When I used this method, it was against the occupation.

“I didn’t use it against a compatriot. I always knew the occupier and his lackeys would stop at nothing to get to me.”

The thickset man made a brief speech in Arabic during the question and answer session, defending US policy and accusing al-Zeidi of “working for dictatorship in Iraq,” before throwing his shoe.

Stolen ‘technique’

Al-Zeidi later quipped: “He stole my technique.”

What technique is that? Missing?

I’d say Al-Zeidi learned from George Bush’s technique of ducking.

Muntazer al-Zaidi (R) reacts as a shoe is thrown at him during a news conference in Paris, December 1, 2009. Zaidi, an Iraqi reporter imprisoned for throwing his shoes at then President George W. Bush, found himself on the receiving end of a similar footwear attack in Paris on Tuesday.
REUTERS/Reuters TV

Noel Sheppard questions how the media will report this, given Al-Zeidi’s celeb status, now that “the shoe is on the other foot”:

To give readers an idea of the media’s fascination with the original shoe throwing incident, a Google search of “Man throws shoe at Bush” produced 1.2 million results.

As for LexisNexis, similar search terms produced almost 1,000 reports in the days immediately following the event.

CNN logged 34 such reports, with MSNBC and Fox News in second with eight, followed by ABC and NPR with seven, and CBS and NBC with six.

Will Zaidi on the receiving end of a shoe toss be as newsworthy?

Also of interest is not just who reports this, but how.

Consider the tone of the Agence France-Presse article published hours ago:

A protester who presented himself as an Iraqi journalist in exile hurled a shoe Tuesday at the colleague who one year ago found fame hurling his own footwear at then US president George W. Bush. [...]

Following the commotion, the news conference continued with Zaidi taking questions about his famous assault on Bush on December 14 last year, which was shown around the world and made him a hero in the Arab world. [...]

Zaidi’s shock action was rebroadcast repeatedly around the world and made him an instant hero among Iraqis and others who felt that Arab honour had been violated by the US occupation of Iraq.

Introducing his guest at the packed Paris press conference, the president of the local Arab Press Club, Kamal Tarabay, said Zaidi’s “audacious gesture” made him a “hero of the resistance against the occupier.”

See what I mean?

This piece presented Zaidi as practically a hero.

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see if other media outlets that cover this incident use it as another opportunity to praise Zaidi as they bash Bush.

Comedian James Gregory visited the John Boy & Billy Show recently.

Once he got started, he was like a rock rolling downhill, gaining speed and unstoppable.

Mr. Gregory summed up my thoughts and feelings on America, the economy, and the world pretty effectively.

The interview runs 20 minutes and is divided into two parts.

It would be well worth your time to hear what Mr. Gregory has to say.

Second half below the fold.

Remarks by President Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day
delivered 6 June 1984 in Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

Full text here.

Mata has the video below.

More photos:

President Reagan greeting former U.S. Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France. 6/6/84

A reader to Powerline notes it is even more disgusting then first glance:

This video is even more grotesque than you think. It was shot in a suburb of Paris called Aulnay-sous-Bois. The next-door town to Aulnay is called Drancy, about 1 mile away. Drancy was used by the Nazis between 1942-1944 as a deportation holding camp for the Jews of Paris prior to the deportation to the extermination camps in eastern Europe. 65,000 Jews passed through Drancy, of whom 63,000 were killed. In other words, the Israeli boycotters have chosen, of all the supermarkets in France, the one closest to France’s most important holocaust memorial site. Look on google maps to see how close they are.

And guess what happened in Drancy two weeks ago?

Charles Krauthammer describes Europe’s “leading role:”

Blame America First Alive and Well

Obama’s criticism of his own country is nothing new for Democrats. The George Soros wing of the Democrat Party which is now in complete control at the White House has long held the view that whatever problems which exist between the U.S. and other nations we can find fault first in what America is doing. This mode of thinking goes hand in glove with the view First Embarrassment Michelle Obama expressed when she said she had never been proud of her country until her husband was nominated.

Twenty five years ago, the late Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick summed up the Democrat attitude in a speech she delivered to the Republican National Convention in Dallas in 1984 which renominated President Reagan and put him on the path to a landslide win.

The words then are just as true today:

Blame America First
Excerpt from Address of Amb. Jeanne Kirkpatrick
Republican Convention, Dallas Texas, 1984

[Democrats] said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do – they didn’t blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians – they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first crowd” didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When Marxist dictators shoot their way to power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies, they blame United States policies of 100 years ago.

But then, they always blame America first.

What a shame Democrats can’t find more pride for the enormous accomplishments their countrymen have achieved through incredible sacrifice and effort. But then, to recognize those achievements they would have to admit that they fought most of them every step of the way!

All of a sudden, six nations are building aircraft carriers (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, India and China.) For over half a century, most of the carrier building took place in the United States. Russia built some, without much success, towards the end of the Cold War. Britain and France built a few, and several other nations (like India and Brazil), bought second had British carriers so they could maintain one or two in service.

But now six nations are planning or building new carriers, most of them a bit smaller (about 60,000 tons) than the larger U.S. ones (100,000 tons).

Britain & France

India

Brazil

The Hautepierre suburb of Strasbourg on New Year’s Eve. The government mobilized 35,000 police officers nationwide. (Jean-Marc Loos/Reuters)

More than 280 people were detained and more than 1,000 cars torched during New Year celebrations across France, mostly in its troubled suburbs, the interior ministry said Thursday.

Four police officials were slightly injured, according to the interior ministry, which said its security forces “were of the unanimous view” that New Year’s Eve was “rather calm and without major incident.”

The interior ministry had earlier said 445 vehicles were set on fire overnight, but later revised that figure to 1,147.

The number of arrests and cars torched topped last year’s tally of 259 people detained and 372 vehicles burned.

But Israel DOES know how to celebrate the New Year….kill a leader of Hamas:

Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of a Hamas strongman Thursday, killing him along with two wives and four children in the first attack on the top leadership of Gaza’s rulers. As the aerial bombardment escalated, the army said it also was poised to launch a ground invasion.

French Soldier Recruited
To admiration for America in Afghanistan, thanks to close contact with L’Soldats Americaine. That’s what it is purported to be, though bits of it look like it might have been charmingly ghostwritten by Steve Martin:

“We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while – they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army – one that the movies brought to the public as series showing “ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events”. Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day ? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company.

They have a terribly strong American accent – from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever state they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other.

Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine – they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them – we are wimps, even the strongest of us – and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.

Here we discover America as it is often depicted : their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley. Honor, motherland – everything here reminds of that : the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location : books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions : the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.

And they are impressive warriors! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark – only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered – everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.

And combat ? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all – always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks : they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting : they just charge ! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later – which cuts any pussyfooting short.

We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is – from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.

To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America’s army’s deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers”.

ht Jules Crittenden

On Afghanistan, Senator Obama has pledged to send more American troops (something President Bush was already doing, and the Pentagon had ordered long before Senator Obama made his campaign promise). Senator Obama has also said that he’d encourage more NATO allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, and he’d do this by offering them more foreign aid. Meanwhile France has taken a handful of casualties in Afghanistan and now many French troops are refusing to go, and Germany (which participates in Afghanistan, but will not let its forces engage in combat) is also considering withdrawal. Perhaps more foreign aid will prevent this, but the unpopularity of the war in Afghanistan over in Europe makes it unlikely. It would probably take a lot of foreign aid money to make them change their minds, and to make political leaders make take such an unpopular action.

On Iran, this is perhaps the most important issue of the election. American, Israeli, and foreign intelligence services all say that Iran could have a bomb likely in the next 2 years. The UN says Iran might have one already. It is a major foreign policy crisis that we’ve known about for 29years now, and it WILL happen on the next President’s watch. To prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Senator Obama has pledged to have direct talks with Iran. President Bush tried this, and the Iranians literally sat down and laughed at the American request to comply with UN inspectors. Senator Obama has pledged to compell Europe and other nations to enforce stricter sanctions on Iran if they fail to allow full UN inspections, and to get Europe to do this, Senator Obama has said that he’ll offer nations which support sanctions more foreign aid. If that fails, he (like President Bush and Sen McCain) has said that all options are on the table; ie military attack.

On Pakistan, Senator Obama has admitted that his foreign policy strategy is the same as the “current doctrine”; ie the Bush doctrine. The only difference is that Senator Obama has promised to get Pakistan to find Osama Bin Laden, capture/kill him, and help with the global war on terror by offering more foreign aid as a carrot rather than just sticks/threats as President Bush is incorrectly accused of having done.

On Israeli/Palestinian disputes, the Obama campaign has pledged to offer more foreign aid to bring both parties to consensus and this peace in the Middle East.

The same is true across the board. Whatever the nation, the crisis, and the US objective, Senator Obama promises a new kind of politics where America leads by aiding nations rather than threatening them. There is a problem, and it seems no one has noticed, but Senator Biden made it clear at the Vice Presidential debate. The cost of the Congressional Bailout plan for Investment Banks takes away the one thing that an Obama administration had HOPED to use as the crux of their foreign policy:

IFILL: What promises — given the events of the week, the bailout plan, all of this, what promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you’re not going to be able to keep?

BIDEN: Well, the one thing we might have to slow down is a commitment we made to double foreign assistance. We’ll probably have to slow that down.
-Vice Presidential Debate October 2, 2008

Less foreign aid assistance (foreign aid money) means that a President Obama will have the exact same foreign policy as President Bush’s current policy:

the 16month withdrawal from Iraq is not possible, and it will more likely be 20+ months
(anyone think CODE PINK and ANSWER will protest him? Nah, me neither)

no change in Afghanistan even as allies continue to leave the unpopular war

no change in Pakistan’s limited aid in the Global War on Terror

no change in Iran policy, and so air strikes, and expansion of the war on terror will be needed 700 or so days into an Obama administration.

Gwen Ifill failed last Thursday to ask Senator Biden what effect cutting foreign aid will have on the Obama foreign policy that relies almost entirely on increasing foreign aid. Senator Palin missed the opportunity as well. The McCain campaign hasn’t brought it up. The MSM certainly isn’t going to bring it up and embarass their candidate by informing the world of what reality is.

Who will ask?

One, the US unwisely trusted Pakistan to patrol its border. Two, NATO allies objected to the use of “GATOR” mines, which are dropped from planes and could have sealed up the Tora Bora area. But mostly, Fury says the decision to let Afghan allies form “the tip of the spear” was the biggest mistake. “The idea worked like a charm when we faced a common foe, the oppressive Taliban . . . but they were fighting Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden . . . we might as well have been asking for them to fight the Almighty Prophet Mohammed himself.”

In all my reading, research, conversations, etc., I have never heard about NATO blocking the use of GATOR mines. That would have been a great way to prevent Osama Bin Laden’s escape, but America’s allies let them down at every turn in 2001. I believe it, but I doubt we’ll hear Obama talk about how relying on allies isn’t as useful as it was 60yrs ago.

Similarly, I doubt that we’ll see anyone on the political left recognize that Germany and France are looking to pull out of Afghanistan rather than send more troops and do more fighting as the Obama campaign expects (according to Sen Obama, he’ll encourage them to do this by offering more foreign aid, but in the VP debate Sen Biden admitted that the very first thing a President Obama will do is CUT foreign aid.)

If you only watch part of this, start from about 7 min 30 sec. But it’s worth 10 minutes of your time.

Memo to Mr. Obama: This is the America your preacher damns. We ARE the good guys and sometimes, when talking doesn’t work, you just have to go kill the bad guys. Learn your history.

America does not forget her heroes.

H/T Media Mythbusters

Will you remember?
 

When I began immersing myself into politics and shedding the liberal indoctrination of my college years, one of the books I read that shaped some of my current perception, early on, was Anti-Americanism by Jean-Francois Revel. I first heard about him on the Dennis Prager Show, as he gave an interview, from France.

While researching for a post to cover this and this, I discovered that I had completely missed the news that the French intellectual had passed away almost 2 years to the date, on April 30, 2006:

[He] was almost unique among French philosophers in being a champion of economic liberalism and an outspoken critic of the anti-Americanism of European intellectuals – particularly French ones.

~~~

On his visit to the States, Revel had been “astonished by evidence that everything Europeans were saying about the US was false”; and most of his book consisted of a heavily sarcastic point-by-point rebuttal of the knee-jerk, anti-American prejudices of the day. Europe’s loss of leadership during the post-war era, in his opinion, had led to an irrational envy and resentment.
A definitive proof of the irrational origins of anti-American sentiment, he suggested, was to be found in the way in which critics often reproached the United States for some shortcoming, and then for its opposite.

During the Vietnam conflict of the 1960s, for example, French commentators developed a sudden amnesia about their country’s involvement in Indo-China, and the fact that France, while embroiled in its ugly colonial war with the Viet Minh, “frequently pleaded for and sometimes obtained American help”.

Without Marx or Jesus became a best-seller in France and in the United States, but won almost universally hostile reviews from European critics. Revel’s Swedish publisher was unable to get a single television interview for him, despite impressive sales; in Finland he was confronted on television by two “intellectuals” – one from Romania, the other from Poland; his Greek publisher composed a preface in which he begged his compatriots’ pardon for having published the book.

Refusing to be daunted, Revel returned to the charge in L’Obsession anti-americaine. Son fonctionnement, ses causes, ses inconsequences (2003), in which he directed his heavy sarcasm at European intellectuals who claimed that America had brought the 9/11 terrorist attacks on itself and blamed her for impoverishing the developing world through globalisation. Slogans such as “No to terrorism. No to war”, Revel wrote, were “about as intelligent as ‘No to illness. No to medicine’.”

Rather than point fingers at America, he suggested, European politicians should look in the mirror and acknowledge their own shortcomings. America, he argued, had been forced to act almost alone to combat global terrorism because Europe had failed to act in the cause of collective security. As for “globalisation”, developing countries wanted more, not less, access to rich markets.

Revel also detected a tendency of other countries to ascribe their own worst faults to the Americans in a curious “reversal of culpability”. Thus, the Japanese and Germans excoriate America for “militarism”; the Mexicans attack it for “electoral corruption”; the British accuse it of “imperialism”; the Chinese accuse it of “hegemonism”; and Arab writers, post 9/11, for “abridging press freedom”.

But much of Revel’s anger was directed at his fellow countrymen: “We French have had little to say against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, the imams of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the bosses of China and Vietnam. We reserve our admonitions and our contempt and our attacks for Ronald Reagan and George W Bush.”

Revel argued that the same French intellectuals who found great difficulties in criticizing Stalin appear to be the same brain-dead intellectual elitists who fail to perceive the dangers of radical Islamic terror.

from the Brussels Journal:

Early on Sunday morning, the French intellectual Jean-François Revel died aged 82. He was a member of the French Academy and, with philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, economist Guy Sorman, and writer Pascal Bruckner, one of the few truly pro-American French writers.

In his 2002 book “L’obsession anti-américaine” (English version: Anti-Americanism) he analyses anti-Americanism throughout the world. Exposing its paradoxes, its contradictions and its lies, he shows that it is instigated by cultural and political elites, rather than supported by the population at large. Already in 1970, Revel was “astonished by the evidence that almost everything Europeans are saying about the US is false”. Since then, nothing has changed. From the book, an example of French anti-American bias in the press and by politicians:

According to our commentators the fact that the US unemployment rate had dropped below 5 percent since 1984 whereas our own had skyrocketed to around 12 percent, meant nothing good for the US, given that these jobs were mostly “menial jobs.” Ah! Here we have the myth of the menial jobs. How it has comforted us! During the economic slowdown of the first half of 2001 the American unemployment rate rose from 4.4 percent of the working population to 5.5 percent. On 7 May 2001 the French economic daily La Tribune immediately printed a full first page headline “Full Employment Ends in the United States.” This is but one example.

Yet, at precisely the same time the French government applauded itself frenetically for having reduced our own unemployment rate to 8.7 percent, i.e. almost twice the American rate (without taking into account the tens of thousands of actual unemployed that France artificially excludes from its statistics).

By September 2001 the unemployment rate in France already exceeded 9 percent. On 15 February 2001 Le Monde published an article entitled “The End of the American Economic Dream.” In other words, a practically uninterrupted growth of 17 years (1983-2000), an unprecedented technological revolution since the 19th century, the creation of tens of millions of new jobs, an unemployment rate of only 4 percent as well as an enormous and unexpected demographic increase from 248 million to 281 million between 1990 and 2000-all this was but a “dream.” What a pity that France did not realize this dream!

Granted, the author of the article readily straddles the hobbyhorse of the “menial jobs” and deplores that France Americanized itself to the point of “copying the sad example of the working poor.” As if this were the only example given by the American economy from which no lesson can be learned. Undoubtedly, France was better off remaining faithful to its own model of the not working poor.

I do not know if his writings had any influence on them, but with the rise into office by pro-Bush, pro-American Europeans like Sarkozy and Berlusconi, I hold out hope that they are part of the legacy that Jean-Francois Revel leaves behind in this world.

Instead of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky self-loathing view of America taught in our public schools, perhaps we should be investing in Jean-Francois Revel’s work?

Perhaps Reverend Wright and Senator Obama could also be sent a copy of Revel’s book, Anti-Americanism.

From Winds of Change:

Liberty. Humanity. Clarity. And an intelligence that enlightened, revealed, and challenged you every step of the way. Others will step up, and join the love story that he was a part of, and aim at the same things. They will take their place in our civilization’s long chain – but those who rise to Revel’s level are never really replaced. Was de Tocqueville ever replaced? Baron Montesquieu? It is enough that we had them for a short while, borrowed treasures that left something of themselves behind.

He has fought the good fight, and laid down a pen mightier than a brigade of swords. If there is a Heaven, he goes now to its Elysian Fields.

Au revoir notre pere, notre ami (1924-2006). May we prove worthy of your legacy.