Shoes & Dogs

Friends of mine have been having interesting discussions about the "shoe incident":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/world/middleeast/16shoe.html?ref=middleeast

For some, it's just funny. For others, the shoe guy is a hero. A good chunk of people think it's disrespectful under any circumstances to do this to any head of state.

And I can see all the sides to this....but it makes me wonder:

If you could go back in time and be a journalist at a press conference for Hitler what would you do?

If you had the chance to meet Kim Jong il http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong_Il or Omar al Bashir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_al-Bashir today what would you do?

Shake their hands and be respectful? Try to do harm? Say what's on your mind? Throw a shoe?

Under a generic rubric of global civility, does it matter if the head of state is democratically elected (Bush, Hitler) or appointed royalty (Kim Jong il, Queen Elizabeth)? Or took power in a coup?

I know it's incendiary to compare Bush to Hitler, Kim Jong il or al Bashir. Bush isn't anywhere close to the same caliber of genocidal maniac. But it's easy to see that sitting comfortably here in my peaceful city where I have plenty to eat, clean water and electricity.

I think if I lived for 5 years in a city occupied by a foreign power, watching my neighbors experience constant violence and harassment, I too might blur the distinctions.

One of the things I most admire about the women and men in the US military is their ability to keep their politics to themselves. I would have a really hard time doing that. But I know that without an apolitical military, we wouldn't have peaceful transitions between elections. Recognizing the difference between *wanting* to speak up (opposing a war) and *needing* to speak up (Abu Ghraib) is tricky business and I think our military, on the whole, does this remarkably well.

What is our responsibility as civilians and citizens of the world to make the distinction between needing and wanting to speak up? How do we balance civility with social justice? When you know that Omar al Bashir is so not reading the form letter you sent about Darfur through Genocide Intervention Network http://www.genocideintervention.net/ is it OK to throw a shoe at him?

My only beef with the shoe thrower was calling Bush a dog. I know that the Arab world isn't really down with the whole "pet" concept. But I think if they got to know dogs a little better, they'd realize comparing them to Bush is extremely unfair.