Letters: One Reader's View
Those shoes were well targeted
Lest there be any confusion about the success or failure of George W. Bush's Iraq War, we need only see the way in which Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the reporter who threw his shoes at the president last weekend, is being seen in both his own country and the rest of the Arab world ("Iraq salutes its new hero," Tuesday).
Throughout Iraq and the rest of the troubled region, he is being hailed for expressing his unhappiness and dissatisfaction with a president who has done so much damage both in the Mideast and, by extension, to our country as well. It is tempting to be seduced by talk of the "success" resulting from the U.S. troop surge, and I understand some improvement has been seen in Iraq in the past year. But the Iraqi and Arab response to this act of defiance makes it clear that the ill-will generated by U.S. actions and policies over the past eight years remains at significantly high levels, and that it will take years, if not decades, to undo the Bush legacy of failure.
Marc R. Inver
Lafayette Hill