Absolutely.
“So what if another culture thinks it’s a big deal to throw shoes at someone.”
To a great degree, you have to deal with people on their own level, especially primitives like this who are locked in a time warp and whom we must influence to achieve our goals. What such a gesture means in our society is irrelevant if it is of great significance to millions of people who are making a value judgment of us based on how we react to what they would consider a grievous personal insult.
I also just found out the guy called Bush a “dog”. In THEIR culture, calling somebody a “dog” is a far more pejorative term than anything we could possibly conjure in our language.
Further, these insults are not merely directed at Bush. They are directed at the U.S.and the west in general. \
If we were not interested in impacting the attitudes of these people in the first place, we shouldn’t have committed our resources there.
I’m not interested in impacting an attitude such as this guy’s.
Insults are directed daily against the US on muslim websites. This shoe tossing is mild compared to what many other people of this “culture” are saying or possibly planning.
We are Americans, so we respond as Americans. Pres. Bush did just that. I’m satisfied with it.