Word: arabization
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...threw the pair of shoes at President Bush on Sunday was a Shi'a Arab who for years has expressed his bitter frustration about the way things have gone in Iraq. Contacts in Iraq told me that the man came to despise the al-Maliki government because he believes it sold out not just to the U.S. but to Iran as well. He was furious that the al-Maliki government is fabulously corrupt and incompetent. How else can you explain the $100 billion of development money that disappeared down the rat holes in Washington and Baghdad? Or how the electricity...
Tick-tock, tick-tock. Muntadar al-Zeidi's 15 minutes are about to run out. The Iraqi TV reporter who hurled his footwear at President Bush last week became an instant hero in the Arab world even before the second shoe dropped. But he will soon discover that the news cycle is a brutal mistress: before you know it, you're yesterday's headline...
...suggesting that cynical calculation was behind every expression of solidarity for Zeidi. He undoubtedly captured the zeitgeist in the Arab world (and beyond) over Bush and his calamitous foreign policies. Many Iraqis were genuinely moved by his actions, and want him to be released...
...press conference during the last official visit of his term. In many Eastern cultures, hurling a shoe at someone is a grave insult. Iraqi TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi's decision to fling his size 10s made him an instant hero to many, although some noted that it broke Arab rules of hospitality, not to mention the journalists' code of objectivity. But the sentiment behind the shoe leather was widely shared: Iraq may have more of a future now than it did under Saddam, but Iraqis are never going to be grateful for having been invaded. (It's unclear what...
...become almost a clichéd gesture to hurl shoes at a poster, a flag or a statue during demonstrations in the Arab world. Perhaps the most iconic example was when U.S. troops helped bring down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdous Square on April 9, 2003. Hundreds of Iraqis assailed the giant metal corpse, beating it with their shoes in one of the defining images of the fall of Baghdad. How ironic then that President Bush's farewell trip to Iraq will be marked by the image of an angry Iraqi and his shoes. (See pictures...