Dearborn Iraqis: “What Have You Done for Me Lately?”
Arab American Voters Drop Support for Bush.
DEARBORN, Mich. (Reuters) - Hundreds of Arab Americans danced and celebrated in the streets of this Detroit suburb after the fall of Baghdad last year, and enthusiastically shouted thanks to President Bush.
Now, even some of the most vocal supporters of the president blame him for failing to stop the disorder and death in Iraq. One opinion poll shows Bush trailing Democratic Sen. John Kerry among Arab Americans in four key battleground states including Michigan, where every vote could count in a close Nov. 2 election.
“The butcher (Saddam Hussein) is gone, but the bloodshed is still there,” said Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a Shi’ite cleric who in 1979 fled Iraq and moved to Dearborn, home to many of the estimated 235,000 Arab Americans in Michigan.
“President Bush did a good job to remove the cancer,” said Husainy, who led a rally of more than 100 people in support of the invasion when Bush visited Dearborn two years ago. “But he did not do a good job of strengthening Iraq. Iraq is still like an infected patient in an emergency room,” he said.
