Is it OK to throw shoes at George Bush? I'm not going to re-enter here into arguments about the Iraq war or the war on terror, about how much harm Bush is responsible for and how much good (chortle and sneer away those of you who want to). For, if I do, then my shoe-throwing sortie sinks to the bottom of a billion words of other argument. You've all got your positions on these matters. Good. Assume those positions.
Since, however, it seems to be quite widely thought, when the shoe-throwing incident is being talked about, that whoever may have rights against assault, those covered are only human beings, and this does not include the despised president of the United States of America, there are two points that seem to me worth making. One, aiming a shoe at a person's face is a form, precisely, of violent assault. How much damage it would do if it succeeded would depend on the weight and hardness of the shoe, the velocity of the throw, and where and how it struck the victim. But in any case if 'the symbolism is the important thing', it's not the only relevant thing. Aiming a shoe at a person's face is plainly, other things equal, a wrong, and under most legal systems a criminal wrong. You may now decide, in light of how you assess the just-stated 'other things equal' clause in this case, that aiming a pair of shoes at George Bush was a justified act, all things considered. Or that it wasn't justified.
But even if it was justified - and here I come to two - the justification has to acknowledge the wrong contained in the act. Otherwise one has to say that it is, in general, morally acceptable to aim a shoe at a person's face. I discount the possibility of any serious person claiming this and I would not take seriously anyone who did. The wrong is acknowledged, but then justified - justified as a form of symbolic protest or what have you, in the light of other considerations (roughly, the harm Bush has been responsible for). But there is a tradition of this kind of deliberate wrongdoing as a form of justified protest; it's known as civil disobedience, though not all forms of civil disobedience involve the deliberate attempt physically to harm another person. In this tradition it is common for the protestor willingly to accept that he or she will be punished for what they have done. They break the law knowingly, judging that their act is justified by whatever set of moral considerations they appeal to. But they simultaneously show their respect for the rule of law by accepting that their violation of the law should not go unpunished.
Nothing I have said, of course, justifies the beating up of Muntadhar al-Zaidi if that is what has been done to him. Nor could it justify prosecuting him for attempted murder or imposing anything but a mild, mostly symbolic sentence. It is, after all, of some account that al-Zaidi missed.