Remember the shoe-hurling Iraqi reporter, Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at then U.S. President George W. Bush? Today he was released from prison and received a hero’s welcome from supporters, friends, and family members.

"Today I am free again but my home [Iraq] is still a prison. The occupation invaded our country under the pretext of liberation. It divided brothers and neighbors, it turned our homes into endless funeral tents and our streets into cemeteries,” he told reporters shortly after his release.

He was supposed to be released on Monday but legal red tape delayed his homecoming.

Speaking at a press conference hosted by Al Baghdadiya, the television station he worked for as a reporter, al-Zaidi spoke about torture and abuse by prison guards:
"At the time that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on television that he could not sleep without being reassured of my fate, I was being tortured in the worst ways; I was beaten with electric cables and iron bars."

Al-Baghdadiya television showed footage of him arriving at the station wrapped in an Iraqi flag and wearing sunglasses. The staff slaughtered at least three sheep in his honor.

Earlier, his eldest brother, Uday, told reporters that medics in Greece were expecting the reporter’s arrival after his visa was recently approved.
 “We decided as a family for him to go for physical and psychological treatment in Greece,” Uday said at his brother’s flat in central Baghdad. One of Mr. al-Zaidi’s three brothers will accompany him.

Uday alleged that his brother was given injections by prison staff against his will. He said that doctors told his brother that they were treating him for migraines and stress.
“They injected him with substances but he had no idea what they were,” he said. “Every time he tried to refuse to have the injections, the doctors would say, ‘You don’t know how to do our job better than we do.’”

Al-Zaidi has become a hero to many Arabs. Some have even called him “the father of the shoe revolution.” Fathers from prominent families in several Arab nations have offered al-Zaidi their daughters as brides. A Saudi business man offered him his limousine as a gift. A Libyan group headed by Gaddafi's daughter gave him an award, and poets wrote hundreds of verses about his “heroic” act. Yesterday I tweeted about an interesting series of photographs by BBC, “How shoe throwing became fashionable.”

While throwing his shoes at Bush at a news conference in Baghdad in December 2008, al-Zaidi shouted: "This is a farewell kiss, you dog." Bush managed to duck the flying size 10 shoes, but he will he ever be able to duck from historical embarrassment?

Eight years have passed since the horrific events of September 11, 2001, and the U.S. government is still waiting to pay the $25 million reward it has offered to anyone who provides information leading to Osama bin Laden's capture.

Meanwhile, almost eight years have passed since the U.S. has launched Operation Enduring Freedom, less than a month after the attacks of 9/11, in order to destroy al-Qaeda and the Taliban government that harbored the group. It was supposed to be a swift and decisive victory until the U.S. botched an effort to nab bin Laden in late 2001 in Afghanistan's Tora Bora region. His trail has since gone cold, and everything has gone wrong.

George W. Bush shifted his attention to Iraq. We were told that the Land of the Two Rivers was ruled by a horrible man who was stockpiling WMDs and was bent on setting the region on fire. We were told that he also had something to do with 9/11. We found out that we were duped:

"Never mind," they said, " he is still a bad man." And Saddam was hung.

We were also told that democracy is contagious, and once we plant it in Iraq, it will spread all over the Middle East. They then showed us the "purple fingers," and we rejoiced. But now Iraq has become the "bad war"; it has been deemed a "war of choice." The "good war" we are told is in Afghanistan, "a war of necessity" in Obama's own words.

Today, America mourns the memory of those who perished eight years ago. But today America needs to reassess what has been done in the name of the victims of 9/11: two horrible and unwinnable wars. This is the reality of the situation.

No Afghans or Iraqis have been directly involved in the attacks of 9/11. All 19 hijackers were Arabs, mostly from Saudi Arabia, and their leader is in hiding. Exacting revenge for 9/11 was and still is a job most suited for the CIA, anti-terror units, and other international security agencies.

However, President Obama has already ordered the deployment of 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan by the end of the year, bringing the U.S. total to 68,000 and the coalition total to 110,000. This is despite the fact that now, for the first time, a majority of respondents (51 percent) in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll said the war was not worth the fight.

This past August was the deadliest month for US troops since the start of the war in October 2001, according to the Pentagon. Taliban forces have gained ground, and coalition troop casualties have steadily risen; therefore, an increase in American troops on the ground in Afghanistan will only lead to more casualties. You do not have to be a military general to figure this out.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has done a mediocre job on the intelligence side in the hunt for bin Laden. According to a recent article in the Times Online "the fruitless search [for bin Laden] has essentially been outsourced by the U.S. to a network of Pashtun spies run by the Pakistani intelligence services."

One of the former CIA agents, called Mr. Keller, interviewed for this article "spoke no Middle Eastern languages, and was not an expert on al-Qaeda or Pakistan."

Now we know why the reward for bin Laden's head remains unclaimed!

There is no "good war" and "bad war" in the aftermath of 9/11...there is bad strategy...and it has been bad all along.

Originally published on the Huffington Post