Today the BBC reports: “An Iraqi official was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the journalist was being interrogated to determine whether anybody paid him to throw his shoes at President Bush.” Given the stated policies of the current U.S. administration, the word “interrogated” could mean what the rest of the world would call torture.
The BBC also reports that the man’s name is Muntadar al-Zaidi, and they give an English translation of what he shouted at Bush: “This is a farewell kiss, you dog… This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq.”
Special take-home quiz: Who is on the moral high ground here, George Bush or Muntadar al-Zaidi, and why? Ten bonus points for citing verses from both the Koran and the New Testament.
Update: Leona’s selling T-shirts (see comments).
I have to say I don’t agree with Muntadar al-Zaidi’s method but I can understand the emotional rage he felt toward George Bush. In my moral code, violence=bad. I don’t want to be acted upon violently therefore I choose not to act violently. But if you look at it in the context of all of the violence dealt by Bush’s hand, throwing a shoe at him isn’t enough to call it even. Bush is not the only culprit, but he’s definitely the face of the crime. I’m also against this whole idea of punishing criminals in a torture/death kind of way. From my understanding of the phrase two wrongs don’t make a right, this also includes the death penalty and all forms of physical, mental, and emotional torture or injury. I don’t have a solution for how to deal with criminals, but in my opinion killing and/or torturing them is not going to make a situation better. I have however decided to capitalize on this shoe incident and make shirts: http://www.cafepress.com/BushsSole . I’ll skip the bonus points because I haven’t gotten a chance to read the Koran yet.