Many Arabs regard shoe thrower as hero

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqis and other Arabs erupted in glee Monday at the shoe attack on George W. Bush. Far from a joke, many in the Mideast saw the act by an Iraqi journalist as heroic, expressing the deep, personal contempt many feel for the American leader they blame for years of bloodshed, chaos and the suffering of civilians.

Images of Bush ducking the fast-flying shoes at a Baghdad press conference, aired repeatedly on Arab satellite TV networks, were cathartic for many in the Middle East, who have for years felt their own leaders kowtow to the American president.

So the sight of an average Arab standing up and making a public show of resentment was stunning. The pride, joy and bitterness it uncorked showed how many Arabs place their anger on Bush personally for what they see as a litany of crimes — chief among them the turmoil in Iraq and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The reaction explains in part the relief among Arabs over Barack Obama’s election victory, seen as a repudiation of the Bush era. But it also highlights the task the next president will face in repairing America’s image in the Mideast, where distrust of the U.S. has hampered a range of American policies, from containing Iran to pushing the peace process and democratic reform.

Some Iraqis were appalled by the act, including Iraqi Kurdish lawmaker Abdullah al-Alayawi, who called it “irresponsible conduct” and an affront to the Iraqi people. But such voices were drowned out by those who felt it was time someone stood up to the American president.

Bush “got what he deserves,” said a Jordanian businessman, Raed Mansi, in Amman.

“I hope he got the message loud and clear: that he’s loathed for his wrongdoing, for killing Muslim women and children in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine,” the 52-year-old contractor said.

Some regional TV channels aired the footage from Sunday’s press conference more than a dozen times in several hours. The scene bounced around Internet networking sites such as You Tube and Face- book, showing Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi standing, hurling both his shoes at Bush and shouting in Arabic, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Shoes hold a special place in the Arab lexicon of insults as a show of contempt — effectively saying, you’re lower than the dirt on my shoes. Even sitting with the sole of a shoe pointed at another person is seen as disrespectful.

The hurling of shoes at Bush on his last visit to Iraq as president made an ironic bookend to one of the first images after the 2003 U.S. invasion, when Iraqi opponents of deposed leader Saddam Hussein toppled one of his statues in Baghdad and hit it with their shoes.

Al-Zeidi attained instant hero status around the Arab world. At one Baghdad elementary school, a geography teacher asked her students if they had seen the footage of the shoe-throwing, then told them, “All Iraqis should be proud of this Iraqi brave man, Muntadhar. History will remember him forever.”

In Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City, thousands of supporters of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr burned American flags in protest against Bush and called for the release of al-Zeidi, a 28-year-old Shiite who works for the private Iraqi TV station Al-Baghdadia.