Big Stupid Guy thinks Al-Zeidi should be punished for committing “the gravest insult one of his culture could launch at another human being.” Now, perhaps I’m reading this wrong (I don’t think I am), but what I’m getting at this is that Big Stupid Guy thinks Al-Zeidi should be punished for his expression of his anger towards Bush.

Let me clarify: I didn’t vote for George W. Bush either time he ran for President. I didn’t think the Iraq War was at any point a good idea, and I do think Al-Zeidi should be punished: but not for expressing his feelings towards President Bush.

What Al-Zeidi should be punished for is for an attempted assault on a human being with two pair of shoes. I’m not going to make a joke about “assault with a deadly shoe”, but, clearly, the only thing that got in the way of one of those items of footwear giving Bush a black eye or a broken nose was our President’s ninja like reflexes (I also won’t make make any jokes about the Secret Service failing to take a shoe for the President). While there have been light hearted jokes about this incident, I know that if someone threw a shoe at me, I’d like to think they’d be getting the cuffs slapped on them too.

So, in the sense that Big Stupid Guy thinks Al-Zeidi shouldn’t be getting a pardon, I agree. But I cannot disagree more with his reasoning behind his decision than I do.

Big Stupid Guy details the shoe throwing as “an insult he hurled in public, no less, and one that went beyond insulting the head of state. What’s more, it wasn’t the president of any random Western nation: it was the president of the nation that liberated an entire people, people of a land in which he felt free enough to throw shoes at a head of state without fear of death by, or shortly after, torture, which, by many accounts, he likely would have suffered under Saddam.”

Well, except, the United States has been engaging in torture, under that same President, and by the authority of that same President, that Al-Zeidi threw a shoe at, so I don’t quite buy his argument. Furthermore, “insulting” a politician should never EVER be grounds for an arrest and/or punishment, and I question the logic at doing so. Al-Zeidi wasn’t tackled to the ground for “insulting” Bush, he was tackled for committing an assault, but I’m very disturbed by the notion that it is the “insult” that he should be punished for.

Now, I realize that Iraq is not America, and Iraqis don’t enjoy our Constitution. But I would expect an American to recognize that arresting a protester for an insult is inherently un-American. Forget the shoes for a second, what if this was a Young Republican standing up in an audience and giving Barack Obama a single-finger salute and a hearty “Fuck you?” What if this was an aging hippy reeking of weed mooning Dick Cheney? In neither case would there be a physical assault, but in both there’d be quite a mighty insult. And while, certainly, arresting the hippy for indecent exposure would be appropriate, I would hope neither would be arrested simply for expressing their beliefs.

Would Big Stupid Guy be demanding they be punished for this insult? I hope no one would.

It’s like this: even though I tend to be a liberal, or at least, liberally minded, I tend to dislike “hate crime” legislation because they punish people for the real or perceived motivation behind a violent act. I don’t think people should be punished for their intentions, merely for their actual conduct. I feel this way for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I believe that when you punish people for how they feel, it’s the first step on a slippery slope towards the destruction of the right of this country’s citizens to express themselves without fear of repercussion.

Should Al-Zeidi be punished? Absolutely. But not for giving an insult. He should be punished strictly for the assault, and not for the expression of his feelings. Doing so would be absolutely un-American.