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Source: http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/21/bush-shoe-iraq-oped-cx_tv_1221varadarajan.html
The Arab Sole
[Forbes] Tunku Varadarajan - A vast swath of people, from Morocco to Iraq, have found cultural and tribal, even civilizational, catharsis in a 20-second display of theater comprising the hurling of shoes at George W. Bush at a press conference in Baghdad. Yet only a people who live under the boots of their rulers celebrate the throwing of a shoe at a guest. Is this how their heroism is now defined? To me - to many - this is alarming proof of the depth of Arab impotence, of the Lilliputian self-image that drives Muslim Arabs to take to terrorism, to assault that which they cannot comprehend. The irony that has been lost on them is the fact that in the entire Arab world, only in Bushified Iraq could such an act of protest be possible. The writer is a professor at the Stern Business School at NYU and research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.