Al-Zaidi Update

Forced by my blog post (lol), The Bush Administration had to respond to the detention and beating of shoe thrower Muntadar al-Zaidi. You'd never guess, but apparently he's passing the buck on it.

"The president believes that Iraq is a sovereign country, a democratic country, and they will have a process that they follow on this," White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters. "The president harbors no hard feelings about the incident."

It's just the wrong reaction. Iraq may be sovereign but so is every other country on Earth and that doesn't stop us from commenting on their internal affairs, and at times invading them. So long as we have 140,000 Americans in that country, we have a responsibility to do what we can to maintain order. This is the consequence of silence:

Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated on Monday, demanding the release of Muntazar al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw shoes at Bush.

In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, crowds threw shoes at an American military patrol.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that tribal chieftains in Kirkuk and Diyala Provinces showed solidarity with al-Zaidi and demanded his release.

While Najaf is Sadrist country, Kirkuk is most definitely not. This can easily get out of control. Requesting al-Zaidi's release is not a moral decision, it's a geopolitical one.